The Optometric Physicians of Washington wishes to be your best resource for assuring your students have the necessary vision skills to succeed. In addition, we wish to help you teach your students about the miraculous process of vision.

Vision is so important to the learning process. In fact, 80 percent of all learning during a child's first 12 years comes through vision. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to know when a child is struggling with his or her vision - children are good at "masking" problems or they simply do not know how the world is supposed to look.

Please see Children's Vision to learn more about children's vision issues and how to identify them. Also see VISION USA for information about an eye care program that can help your under-served students and their families receive free eye health and vision examinations. Finally, sign up for our newsletter on the menu to the left for a bi-annual update of vision issues that can affect your students and ways to improve visual health in your school.

Finally, the following are very strong tools that you can incorporate into lesson plans and use to complement staff procedures in order to help maximize students' eye health. To obtain a copy of either resource, please send an e-mail to publicrelations@aoa.org, or call the American Optometric Association Order Department at 1-800-262-2210 for a complete catalog of eye education materials. 

• Journey Through Our Eyes - An interactive CD-ROM program designed for students in grades 4 through 6 that will teach students about the biology of the eye and miraculous process of vision. 
• School Nurse's Guide to Vision Screening/Ocular Emergency - A great resource to help school nurses deal with eye emergencies and make the most of school vision screenings.