Texans Can Academy – Fort Worth Westcreek has recently paired with volunteer optometrist, Dr. Gayle Daniels, to launch a new program at the school called Eye Tech Academy. Dr. Daniels chose the Fort Worth Westcreek campus, located at 6620 Westcreek Drive, as the pilot school to teach a group of selected students the skills and knowledge to become an Optician including anatomy and function of the eye, understanding written prescriptions, frame styling, adjustment, repairs and dispensing as well as cutting the prescription lenses to make a complete pair of eye glasses.
The pilot Eye Tech Academy program consists of a group of eight junior and senior high school students from Texans Can Academy – Fort Worth Westcreek. Upon completion of the program, students will be offered the opportunity to interview for local optical career-based positions to continue to utilize their new skills.
“It’s important to our schools to engage with the community and be able to get our students ready for life after graduation,” said Ku-masi Lewis, principal of Texans Can Academy – Fort Worth Westcreek. “This group will be able to finish the Eye Tech Academy program knowing they have a marketable skill during their career search.”
The program offers 13 weekly sessions with Dr. Daniels at the Fort Worth Westcreek campus. The volunteer optometrist teaches exposure to the career of being an Optician including proper selecting of frames, measuring of pupillary distance and bifocal height, tracing the frames and edging the lenses.
Along with the classroom teaching, the students will participate in four to five events where they will be able to apply their training in the Fort Worth community. Five students from the program recently participated in their first event on Wednesday, February 14, when they visited the Union Gospel Mission. The Eye Tech Academy collaborated with Community Eye Clinic to help with eye examinations for the unsheltered adults living along the E. Lancaster corridor. The group was able to examine 35 adults, make and dispense 19 pairs of glasses on site, within 3 hours. Inside the mobile lab, SeeMore, the students assisted with pulling the prescription lenses, mounting the finished lenses and dispensing the glasses to the patients.
“I was so proud of the students’ performance during their first community clinic and experience with actual patients,” said by Dr. Daniels, Director of the Eye Tech Academy program and Founder of Daniel Migael Foundation, Inc. “They were professional, respectful and demonstrated confidence while helping the patients.”
The next community event for the Eye Tech Academy is Saturday, March 3rd. A health fair sponsored by the Junior League of Fort Worth at FWISD Billingsley Field House from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.
During their third event, the students will visit the Fort Worth Homeless Coalition’s annual Project Homeless Connect at First Presbyterian Church on Thursday, April 26th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., where they are expecting approximately 100 individuals to be seen.
Texans Can Academies believe in providing the highest quality education for all students, especially those who have struggled in a traditional high school setting. Their mission is to help students earn their high school diplomas and assist with all of their needs to further career paths after graduation. For more information on Texans Can Academy – Fort Worth Westcreek, please visit www.texanscan.org.