“There’s so much pressure to be a perfect immigrant,” Ms. Reyes said. “They basically want us to save babies from burning buildings, have a 5.0 GPA and become doctors. But I’m just teaching these tiny humans to be great Americans.”

Ms. Reyes was brought to the United States from Monterrey, Mexico, by her mother at age 2. When she thinks of home, she thinks of the only one she can remember, in San Antonio — a big city with a small-town feel, where she and her grandmother would pick pecans from a tree in the front yard. Her childhood was “all-American,” she said, recalling late afternoons at marching band practice, at the Y.M.C.A. or selling Girl Scout cookies.

The only thing that distinguished her life from those of her friends was that she spoke Spanish at home, and her mother was strict. When she was 14, she found out why.

Her friends wanted to take a shopping trip to South Padre Island, then Laredo, on the Texas border with Mexico, but her mother forbade her from going because if she came upon an immigration checkpoint, she would not have the paperwork to pass.

“It changes the trajectory of your life,” Ms. Reyes said.

The barriers of being undocumented became more apparent after that — especially in applying to college. But with teachers’ help, she secured private scholarships for a graduate school program for special education teachers who wanted to teach the hearing-impaired.

She received her master’s degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and now educates six hearing-impaired 3- and 4-year-olds.