Harriet Burbank Rogers (April 12, 1834 – December 12, 1919) was an American educator, a pioneer in the oral method of instruction of the deaf.

Her advocacy for oralist instruction children increased utilization of oral-only communication models in many American schools.

Rogers initially used both oral and sign methods, instructing Fanny to speak and to use her fingers to spell words.

Her success in teaching Fanny attracted the attention of Gardiner Hubbard, the Massachusetts businessman whose daughter Mabel was also deaf (she would later marry Alexander Graham Bell).

The major drawback of this method, however is that it requires lot of time and effort from teachers to teach an individual even the basic words, and little can be unsterstood without additional visual cues like fingerspelling.

In 1867, John Clarke, a wealthy merchant who lost his hearing in his later years, opened a school for the deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Poor health forced Rogers to leave the directorship of the Clarke School in 1886, and was succeeded by Caroline A. Yale.

The oral method of instruction was initially opposed by many in the United States, where sign language was preferred as the primary mode of communication for the deaf.

However, Rogers' success in teaching deaf children to speak swayed public opinion on this matter in another direction, opening the door for the method of auditory/oral instruction in many American schools.