Commentary by: Nick Lum, Founder of BeeLine Reader

If you’ve ever been to an eye doctor, you’ve probably heard the mantra: every 20 minutes, you should spend 20 seconds looking at something 20 feet away. This advice is meant to help office workers combat visual fatigue or eyestrain that can set in if you spend all day doing ‘close work,’ like reading on a computer screen.

These days, it’s not just office workers who are experiencing and overdose of close work. In normal times, students switch between various focal distances (watching a teacher give a lecture, doing close work, working in groups, and socializing with friends). In the world of distance learning, all of these activities are now mediated by a screen—which means that students are spending far more time staring at a single plane that is just a foot or two in front of their faces. Not surprisingly, this lack of focal diversity is adversely affecting students and making it harder for them to do their work.

Close work can be especially taxing because it requires bringing your eyes together (‘converging’) and forming a triangular shape, as shown below. By comparison, looking into the distance allows you to relax your eyes into a parallel position, which is easier and more comfortable.

Reading is even more taxing than merely looking at fixed spot up close because reading involves constantly shifting the angles of your visual triangle and keeping your eyes perfectly ‘converged.

While it is certainly unfortunate that so many students are impacted by these challenges, the one upside is that they bring greater awareness to the need to make reading on screen less burdensome for students. Students with

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Commentary by: JoAnn Mitchell, CEO/Founder of Mission Achievement and Success Charter School, @MAS_charter

Our meetings with community partners and local leaders all have one thing in common. At the end of our presentation, we always get The Question: “So what’s your secret? What’s the magic piece that makes MAS Charter Schools so successful?”

Every time, the answer is as unsatisfying and anticlimactic as the last. “Well, it’s everything.”

It’s a question the whole education community asks, from state and federal lawmakers and district superintendents at the top to our newest teachers in the classroom. How do we aid kids in overcoming odds to read and do math on grade level, to graduate from the public school system to achieve success in the postsecondary and professional world?

At MAS, we’ve built our reputation on improving student outcomes. Despite high rates of poverty and English language learners, our students keep up with or outperform those in affluent Albuquerque or Santa Fe schools here in New Mexico. More than three-quarters of our students in kindergarten and first grade are already reading, where our state hovers at just 25 percent for students at the critical third-grade milestone. One hundred percent of our three classes of high school seniors have graduated–with acceptance to a postsecondary program or a branch of the military. New Mexico’s graduation rate was 74.9 percent in 2019, ten percentage points behind the national average.

So what’s the secret sauce? The whole model.

We teach teachers to grow into the excellent educators they all have the potential to be, through continuous professional development throughout the year. Our educators participate in 45 minutes of professional development every day, adding up to a minimum of 135 hours each year. Most traditional public schools only

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Previously Published on Forbes | March 13, 2020
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER