Seven-year-old Dylan Fox has a big smile on his face as he bursts through the classroom door at UCF Downtown. He\u2019s ready for summer camp \u2014 and this one is complete with toy axe throwing, board games, arts and crafts, and a day full of friendly competitions all centering around one goal \u2014 making children better readers.<\/p>\n
Fox is one of 32 students ages 6 to 17 participating in iREAD<\/a>, an intensive reading program developed by the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic<\/a> to improve reading comprehension, spelling and writing. The four-week summer program just completed its fourth year. It\u2019s become so sought out by parents \u2014 some of whom travel from across the country \u2014 that the clinic began offering the same specialized, individual therapies by appointment throughout the year.<\/p>\n When Fox arrives at camp, he\u2019ll high five his campmates, drop off his backpack and scamper to the side of the room where his hearing technology will be tested, and a student clinician will affix a tiny remote microphone on her collar to be sure it\u2019s transmitting correctly to his cochlear implants.<\/p>\n Fox, who was born with hearing loss in both ears, is one of four children in this summer\u2019s iHEAR program (part of iREAD) who have atypical hearing. Three campers have hearing loss, and a fourth has an auditory processing deficit which causes a breakdown in how the central auditory nervous system efficiently processes speech information, particularly in noisy listening situations. The iHEAR participants learn alongside other campers with typical hearing, but who are there to gain additional help with reading and language development. Their camp fees are waived, thanks to the generous support of Manish Hirapara \u201998<\/strong> and Vieng Hirapara \u201999<\/strong> who created an endowed fund, the Hirapara Enriching Audiology Resources (HEAR) at UCF, to help people with hearing loss.<\/p>\n