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News: Deaf students, teachers reuniting today in McAllen | mcallen, deaf, students - The Monitor
Students and teachers who have been part of the McAllen school district’s Regional School for the Deaf are set today to have their first reunion at the Holiday Inn Holidome.
The gathering is slated from 1 to 4 p.m. at the South Col. Rowe Boulevard hotel and will include a raffle, buffet, socializing and presentations on the deaf program’s history and current goals.
Jennifer Powell, a retired 30-year program teacher, said attendees can bring yearbooks and other items to share. She joined the program when it was based in Edinburg before it moved to McAllen and expanded in the early 1980s.
The 26-year-old deaf education program is based at Escandon and Seguin elementary schools, Brown Middle School and Memorial High School.
The school handles more than 100 students from Rio Grande City to Mercedes. Students attend the program through recommendations from Easter Seals Rio Grande Valley or their local district’s special education department.
The reunion has been in the planning stage for about a year.
Powell, now an outreach worker at the Valley Association for Independent Living in McAllen, said she and former student Petra Garcia Torres contacted key people who worked with the deaf in Austin, Houston and San Antonio and other cities nationwide to find former students and teachers. Alumni contacted her from as far as California and Missouri.
“The deaf population is kind of small, so we interact with each other,” Powell said through a sign language interpreter.
Torres, a McAllen homemaker, graduated from the program at Memorial in 1985. She said she enjoyed all the classes and had no trouble interacting with non-hearing impaired students.
Still, she says she is a little nervous about the reunion because — as she suspects of most of her classmates — she has changed some through the years.
Attendees at today’s event are expected to vote how often to hold future reunions.
For more information, e-mail jenmezpow@tmail.com.
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Students and teachers who have been part of the McAllen school district’s Regional School for the Deaf are set today to have their first reunion at the Holiday Inn Holidome.
The gathering is slated from 1 to 4 p.m. at the South Col. Rowe Boulevard hotel and will include a raffle, buffet, socializing and presentations on the deaf program’s history and current goals.
Jennifer Powell, a retired 30-year program teacher, said attendees can bring yearbooks and other items to share. She joined the program when it was based in Edinburg before it moved to McAllen and expanded in the early 1980s.
The 26-year-old deaf education program is based at Escandon and Seguin elementary schools, Brown Middle School and Memorial High School.
The school handles more than 100 students from Rio Grande City to Mercedes. Students attend the program through recommendations from Easter Seals Rio Grande Valley or their local district’s special education department.
The reunion has been in the planning stage for about a year.
Powell, now an outreach worker at the Valley Association for Independent Living in McAllen, said she and former student Petra Garcia Torres contacted key people who worked with the deaf in Austin, Houston and San Antonio and other cities nationwide to find former students and teachers. Alumni contacted her from as far as California and Missouri.
“The deaf population is kind of small, so we interact with each other,” Powell said through a sign language interpreter.
Torres, a McAllen homemaker, graduated from the program at Memorial in 1985. She said she enjoyed all the classes and had no trouble interacting with non-hearing impaired students.
Still, she says she is a little nervous about the reunion because — as she suspects of most of her classmates — she has changed some through the years.
Attendees at today’s event are expected to vote how often to hold future reunions.
For more information, e-mail jenmezpow@tmail.com.
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