As a teacher you are in an ideal position to observe the eyesight of your students. Usually, teachers know which children have problems seeing the classroom board.
What most teachers do not know is that they can do a lot to minimize eye and vision problems from developing in the first place. Most important you may be in a position to detect a problem early on so it does not develop into something serious like ADD or Dyslexia. Both have symptoms that are similar to children with eye-coordination problems.
There are simple, yet effective, ways a teacher can help to keep vision problems to a minimum. Vision training in the classroom is not a new idea. Dr. William H. Bates introduced simple eye exercises into the schools in Grand Forks North Dakota in 1903. "The results were so encouraging that the method was employed continuously for more than 10 years. Among 2,000 children, less than 1% were myopic." (New York Medical Journal, July 29, 1911).
A large scale study was conducted in the school system at North Bergen, N.J. over a three year period beginning in 1919 and ending in 1922. The study involved all the North Bergen schools with more than 5,000 students.
Professor Husted, Superintendent of Schools of North Bergen wrote:
"This is a remarkable documentation of the priceless values of this method of education. That 674 or 71% of the 922 students below normal (20/20) have improved eyesight in 1920, that 574 or 62.5% have improved in 1921, that 500 or 52% have improved in 1922, is surely a marvelous showing. The record of improvement is suggestive of what a very faithful and systematic application of these health principles may accomplish."
Today we have numerous repots that vision problems decrease when teachers are aware that spending a few minutes doing Vision training exercises have profound effect.
Fill your classroom with Magic eyes
Teachers all over the world have too much work. Classes are large and the teaching objectives are strict. Even with very little time a lot can be accomplished as you have seen from the above North Bergen study. This study may be more than 80n years old, yet the principles are still valid today. Even more so since the vision problems in 1920 were about half of what they are today. In Mexico 23% of the school children are fitted with glasses. In Hong Kong, SIngapore and Taiwan more than 50% of school children wear glasses. In Taiwan 78% of high school students are nearsighted.
Here are some simple exercises you can do in class to help your students maintain good eyesight.
Place an eye-chart on the classroom board - This simple strategy, developed by Dr. William Bates in 1903, consists of having the eye-chart from their seats. First one eye then another. This is essentially the method that was used in the North Bergen study which reduced eyesight problems from 50 to 70%.
This exercise reinforce the children's far point reference which contributes greatly to maintaining natural clear eyesight.
Palming to rest the eyes - Simply rub the hands together as you would do on a cold day. When the hands are nice and warm place the palms, not the fingers, over your closed eyes. Instruct the children to exhale as slowly as possible. This can be made into a game by having them hum a tone to see who can make the longest breath.
This exercise rest the eyes and will improve visual acuity. Can be done before the eye-chart exercise.
Look close, near and far - With natural clear vision you can focus on objects very close as well as on objects very far away and anything in between. Practice this natural ability by looking at different objects at progressively further and further out. Typical classroom work does not involve using the distance vision, so anything you can do to maintain this ability will be beneficial. Have the children look at birds, airplanes etc. Noticing the smallest detail they can possibly see.
Soldiers undergoing commando raining discovered that defective vision became normal when they followed arrows shoot in target practice and normal vision became superior.
It takes as little as 5 minutes a day, yet it can impact a child for a lifetime.
