Zagouris was at the Ashton home last week to help the child’s listening development, which is impaired because she was born with her middle and outer ears deformed. The teacher visits the home each week to check on the girl’s progress.

Salena Ashton credits Zagouris’ help with communication skills, hearing aids and schooling with boosting her self-confidence to help Rachel develop.

Easter Seals Rio Grande Valley recommended the Ashtons to the Regional School for the Deaf, which works with students from Roma to La Feria and helps families learn how to educate their hearing impaired children.

The school also gets recommendations from the Region One Education Service Center in Edinburg and school districts in their service area.

"We do try to catch them when they are infants and we do have a teacher that goes out to the home and works with parents and begins to talk about the implications of the hearing loss," said Alma L. Garza, coordinator for the RSD.

The McAllen school district and RSD use local audiologist Michael J. Raff as a consultant to help student hearing assessments. He does ear tests at Escandon Elementary School twice a week. He said many of the cases he sees are for congenital hearing loss.

"For me, I know you get to know these kids and I’ve seen many of the kids at the regional school grow up and have children of their own," said Raff, who has worked with the deaf school and the McAllen school district since 1981. "We form kind of a close bond with the relationship we have with them."

Garza’s staff provides training for teachers in area school districts on how to deal with students’ hearing problems. Their recommendations can include teachers sitting these students away from noisy equipment and directly looking at them when speaking.

Soraida Martinez, 32, an elderly and disabled child provider in Pharr, is the mother of 9-year-old Ricardo, a fourth-grader at Hidalgo Park Elementary School. Ricardo has a hearing problem in his right ear and is in a special education class because of mild mental retardation.

Martinez said she has been pleased with how school officials have accommodated her son, despite his being at a kindergarten and first-grade level and wearing an interior ear listening aid.

"They are pushing him to where his level is," she said in Spanish.

Zagouris occasionally visits the Martinez family to check on Ricardo’s academic progress. It is part of the $2,500 bill the Hidalgo school district pays the regional school for looking after the child’s needs during a nine-month period.

Martinez said she is concerned about her son’s future.

"I get worried knowing he’s going to have to go to junior high and high school," she said. "He’s a little boy. I’m always around him and helping him out."

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