Choosing Your Swim School To Suit Both You And Your Child

Choosing Your Swim School is Serious

You can't just assume when choosing your swim school, that because a pool is advertising Learn To Swim classes, that they know what they are doing.

Wait... Get Your Lesson Plans Here

Learn to swim teaching methods have come a long way since I was a child and I’ve continued to watch them develop over the years as a teacher. But there is still no consistent research into what is the best way to teach.

The fields are narrowing however, with the advent of the internet and the dissemination of video, teaching methods have become more and more similar. Even so, almost every swim school has its own philosophies that differ ever so slightly from each other.

One day a swim school will come along that will do proper research. That is they will, for example, have three classes that all teach exactly the same lesson plan and teaching techniques in every way except one and at the end of each term, the results would be compared to see what, if any effect it had on the improvement of the student's abilities.

Such a school will I believe become a key stone school for all others. But a small private school does not have the capacity to do this and it is hard to convince backers of the larger schools that change is a good thing.

So How Do You Decide Which Swim School?

I suspect that there is always going to be some differences between swim schools so how do you decide which school is right for you and your child?

Choose Your Swim School Well

Well, basically you ask each school what their philosophy is and choose the one that you feel the most comfortable with.

Obviously, you make sure that they are qualified to teach and that they are registered with a reputable state or national body. And it would not hurt to ask the parents of the school you are looking at if they are happy with the progress of their children. But in the end, it is what you are happy with that counts.

The only ones I would stay away from are the ones that believe it is ok to stress a child out as long as they learn to swim. It is not ok to nonchalantly stress out a child! Unfortunately, however, just like the old belief that teaching a child to swim is simply a matter of throwing them in the deep end and seeing what happens, this philosophy often works. But for those, it doesn’t work with and even for many of those that it does work for, the consequences are disastrous.

Worse still, teachers like me end up with the reject cases from these schools and it is very sad and often a long road to recovery and a child being able to enjoy the water.

Other than that one caveat and checking out the qualifications of the school, it is up to you to choose the one that you feel the most comfortable with. Don't let anybody make it more complicated than that for you.

Enjoy     
Richard