Herlong K-12 Mass Vision Screening
In January 2020, Dr. Christopher Bonn, Superintendent of the Fort Sage Unified School District, in Herlong, California, invited us to go to Herlong and screen the students in his district. We sent a letter of introduction to the School District. It included in part:
“We note that the program is beneficial for ALL ages; however, early detection is the key to getting children on track to being lifelong successful readers. Parents not wanting their child(ren) to participate in this reading skills assessment are asked to please contact the school.
“We introduce the program as briefly as possible: RBTL is a reading skills program specifically developed to address a lack of jump eye movements, a keystone visual skill NECESSARY for reading. These jump eye movements are a result of the simultaneous and coordinated use of 12 different extra-ocular muscles, 4 intra-ocular muscles, and 4 separate cranial nerves. The program is designed to first of all identify a lack of coordinated jump eye movements through screening (a series of 3 timed eye movement tests). Statistically, we expect to find that at least 20% of your students will be identified as needing varying degrees of remediation. The next step is to offer effective, user-friendly remediation proven to train the eye muscles to work together by using repetitive focusing techniques, in time to increasing metronome beats. Initial screening takes about 5 minutes per student and the program's recommended initial remediation for students needing to get on track is a total of 6 hours (10 minutes a day, every day, for 36 days), with rescreening after 2 or 3 weeks to monitor improvement. This 6 hours of remediation uses an eye-hand coordination focusing exercise, touching lions in time to a metronome beat.
“A highlight of the program’s success is in classrooms in the Washoe County (Nevada) School District. The program is recognized as a reading tool and is available online for use for FREE by all teachers to incorporate into their individual curriculum. The program is also available as an in-school volunteer service program through the School District. You are referred to the website (www.readbetweenthelions.org) for more specific information and for access to all the screening and remediation forms developed for the program which will be used and demonstrated during the presentation.”
For this event, fourteen Lions club volunteers car-pooled the 60 miles to Herlong. We used the elementary school cafeteria in the morning and moved to the high school gym after lunch. Working in teams of two, we screened 92 students (51 elementary and 41 junior/senior high). We tracked the individual results to give to the teachers and summarized the results for our statistics, keeping track of age and screening results only. The total results were Age Appropriate - 18 (20%); Borderline - 30 (32%); At Risk - 44 (48%). We worked with some wonderful kiddos!
After school, we met with Dr. Bonn and the teachers to discuss the screening results and to provide information for the remediation program. We demonstrated the techniques for screening and for the metronome remediation. It's just a matter of Dr. Bonn and the teachers developing a system in their schools to implement the program. Remediation is KEY. It was a very successful event and proved to be a learning experience for everyone.