As many schools have completed the first 30 days of school, school nurses, staff and volunteers are gearing up for conducting vision screening. In children, uncorrected vision impairment can lead to developmental, academic, and social challenges. A school nurse in Cumberland County shared this story from a vision screening she conducted last year showing the impact that vision screening can have in a child’s life.
“The week after school had been out for students, I had a teacher approach me regarding one of her students. I was very familiar with the child’s name. He was one of the students flagged for follow-up during our annual the mass vision screening for the elementary school. The teacher told me that after receiving his glasses, he had a hard time remembering to bring his glasses to school or wearing them when he did have them. He even went as far as breaking his first pair of glasses so he wouldn’t have to wear them. Together the school staff and I were able to encourage him enough consistently wear his glasses. That’s when the teacher really started to notice a difference.
His teacher showed me the differences between his handwriting at the beginning of the year to right before school ended. The examples she showed me went from having big, overcrowded handwriting with incomplete sentences to typical second grade handwriting with complete thoughts and phrases. She explained to me how he was a shy child in the classroom and mostly kept to himself including during recess. By the end of the year he had made a little group of friends who would also occasionally call out to him, “Bring your glasses so we can play!” I am overjoyed that the vision screening made such an impact on that student.”
We hear similar stories to his from school nurses every year, and this proves that vision screenings absolutely change lives.
