Our Lady of Victory parishioners help families, schools diagnose vision problems

NORTHVILLE — When Renee Hooker received a call from her son’s teacher at Our Lady of Victory School in Northville, it wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary.

Young Joshua was having trouble with his reading, the teacher said, and he was a little too rambunctious around his classmates.

“She called him ‘athletic’ in the classroom; he would run into people, not to hurt them, but enough to knock them over,” Hooker said. “There was something wrong with his reading, but she couldn’t quite figure it out.”

Suspecting an attention-deficit disorder, Hooker had Joshua tested by a psychologist, but everything came back normal.

“I couldn’t figure it out, so we got him a tutor at the end of first grade. We did tutoring all summer, and after second grade it really didn’t help, so we thought this really isn’t good. It was probably in second grade, January or February, when I was telling the doctor what was going on. She said to get his eyes checked,” Hooker said.

It turned out Joshua had convergence insufficiency, a condition that affects how the eyes move and focus, which was affecting the youngster’s ability to follow along and comprehend written words.



“Part of the diagnosis was that he would skip words and reverse letters like crazy — small words that he knows — and would reverse letters in the words,” said Hooker, who lives in South Lyon.

While many schools and teachers are trained to help spot potential vision problems in students, issues such as convergence insufficiency are not as easily identifiable without specific training, said Susan Ackerson, project manager for Suburban Eye Care in Livonia and a fellow parishioner at Our Lady of Victory. Ackerson’s husband and Joshua’s optometrist, Dr. John Jacobi, has been diagnosing vision-related learning issues for more than 20 years, she said, and offers training for Catholic and public schools alike on the ins and outs of vision therapy.

“Sometimes it’s, ‘My student is struggling and I’ve tried all these interventions, but it’s still showing up as a potential vision problem.’ That type of training for the teacher to make that assessment really isn’t in place,” said Ackerson, a former English and language arts teacher.

“We visit with the school, visit with the teacher, any counselors or interventionists, the principal comes in sometimes as well, and we sit down, explain what’s going on, and so it’s usually a very eye-opening experience for the teachers.”

Dr. Jacobi, also a parishioner at Our Lady of Victory, said many students who would benefit from vision therapy can go years without receiving the help they need.

“Shortly after I started practicing, my interest in vision therapy began when I realized that there were patients who had needs that were not being met by eyeglasses or contact lenses,” Dr. Jacobi said. “Most of the patients I treat in vision therapy have never been treated before, and have never been diagnosed or have been misdiagnosed.”

The practice offers vision and learning workshops for schools that request them, Ackerson said, as well as a free annual “Ready to Learn” professional development workshop for teachers looking to earn continuing education credits.

Ackerson said beyond the importance of developing good learning habits, vision problems can also harm a student’s self-esteem if left undiagnosed for too long.

“When those vision issues go untreated, the confidence of the child starts to fail, the family dynamic changes based on the stress it puts on the parent-child relationship when it comes time to do their reading and homework. Their test scores are low and the parents are frustrated, the school’s frustrated and the child is frustrated,” Ackerson said. “So I know a lot of teachers feel strongly about the necessity for these educational programs for the community.”

After completing a six-month vision therapy program, Joshua, who will enter fourth grade at Our Lady of Victory this fall, no longer has learning issues, but still needs to catch up on his phonics and other material, his mother said.

“In kindergarten and first and second grade they learn all their phonics, and he totally missed all that because it was too hard for him to focus and took too much energy for him to read and focus on the words and letters,” Hooker said. “But he does read better, and he reads by himself now, whereas before he couldn’t even read for comprehension.”