OnTrack Reading

The phonics training I took and the reading I did in 1998 and early 1999 convinced me that Diane McGuinness was right. The reason children were failing to learn to read was because they weren’t being taught the phonics they needed, or if taught, they were being taught ineffectively.

In search of a client base, I sought out professionals who encountered poor readers. In La Crosse, Wisconsin we have long had a business known as the Family Vision Center. It was, and is, run by Dr. Richard Foss, an optometrist with extensive additional training in vision therapy. I learned that many parents take their children to Dr. Foss to see if subtle vision problems are causing their child’s reading problems.

Dr. Foss and I arranged to meet one evening early in the year 2000. He explained in some detail how certain vision issues might cause a child to have trouble learning to read, while I countered that research indicates that most poor readers need explicit phonics instruction. This was my second exposure to the field of vision therapy, incidentally. When I was trained in Phono-Graphix in Florida earlier that year, the authors of Reading Reflex explained that sometimes a child suffered from certain undiagnosed vision issues. They would, in those cases, refer the child to a local vision therapy department before proceeding with phonics instruction.

Ironically, Diane McGuinness, the parent of one of the authors, wrote in Why Our Children Can’t Read that extensive research had been done which proved that vision problems were not a root cause of reading problems. This is an issue I will return to in a later chapter of this story.

I left the meeting with one overriding impression. Dr. Foss felt that every poor reader should be evaluated to see if vision therapy was indicated whereas I felt that every poor reader should be evaluated to see if phonics instruction was indicated. In addition, neither of us felt that the other’s services would be needed all that often if our own advice were just followed, though we each were willing to allow that there might occasionally be such a need.

In hindsight, and with the benefit of several years of experience working with nearly 200 poor readers most of whom could qualify for the dyslexia label, I have concluded that Dr. Foss was closer to the truth than I was. In fact, I now believe that every first grader who is struggling to learn to read should be evaluated by a developmental optometrist.

But I’m getting ahead of the story. Next I’ll tell you about a boy I’ll call David.

Next: David’s Story, or return to the OnTrack Reading Home Page