The world is new for me one morning when I’m ten. I open the door of the optometrist’s office and step out into a place where I can see individual leaves on a tree and each board on a house and single blades of grass. With my new glasses, everything is clearer, sharper, more detailed.
And easier.
I no longer squint to see the chalkboard or cock my head at a different angle. And I can tell what people think—if they smile or frown or raise their eyebrows in question. Even their words are easier to understand when I can see their lips move.
With headaches gone, the world is brighter.
Sometimes when I take my glasses off at night and put them on the bedside stand, I get to wondering. What if I had lived in the old days, back when only monks and scholars and maybe a few rich kids wore glasses? And I feel sorry for the poor kids back then.
Every six months or so, the world begins to blur again. And since I can’t see, it’s almost as if I can’t think. But a new prescription and updated glasses bring back focus. To my eyes. But to much more.
Once again, I’m less distracted, less fatigued, and more engaged.
***
Decades later, after I’m retired and wearing trifocals, I read about the Vision for Baltimore. This initiative provided eye exams and needed glasses for 7,000 students in Baltimore’s public schools.
Johns Hopkins researchers analyzed what happened after the students used their new glasses. For the first year, reading and math scores rose significantly. But these gains were not sustained in the second and third years. Researchers suspected that many students had lost glasses or broken them. And that with the rapid physical changes of childhood, their lens prescriptions had become outdated.
Eyeglasses can’t solve all learning challenges and poverty and mental health issues that impede success at school. But for the twelve to fifteen percent of U.S. school children who go to class with blurry vision, eyeglasses can be a simple, cost-effective, efficient, and even magical way to help.
So here’s my regret—with how eyeglasses impacted me as a child, why wasn’t I more tuned into this as a teacher?
I should have been.
Apple to Apple 