Let Yourself Shine: Embrace Your Personality
Let your personality flow through you while you're teaching. Let go of your apprehensions and fears and fall back on your training. You know the progressions to front glides, you know the key things we're looking for (head down, body flat, relaxed). Bring some imagination into your lessons and turn on that creative juice. Remember to use exciting evocative imagery to get your point across, but use your own words! Find your "voice" and while you can use our scripts, say them with creative inflection or dramatic delivery.
Don't Be the Waiter Looking for a Tip: Command and Safety First
Be kind, courteous, and polite, but also be commanding, in control, and sometimes, a little "scary." We need to always remember that we are in a potentially dangerous environment. There is a possibility that one of your participants will fall in the water and begin drowning. Safe lessons are our priority, and to achieve that, we need to be listened to. Have fun, play games, be silly, and engaging, but always turn that command voice on when you need to, and bring it out early so you don't have to use it often.
The polite waiter looking for a large tip would accommodate the whims of their participants or clients. In swim lessons, we need to push our swimmers past the comfortable areas of complacency and mediocrity. Instead, we need to challenge our participants by drawing them into challenging situations. While we give support, we sometimes need to be intimidating to get results. Don't be afraid to change your tone of voice to elicit a response. Be commanding, be in charge, but also be approachable.
Speak Well, But Do It Quickly: The Power of Concise Commands
We provide scripts because they are quick, easy, and repeatable things to get a desired response. We've pared down that language to make it short and actionable. We encourage you to give commands. The best teachers are concise, brief, and clear. Remember the cycle: Command, action, feedback, repeat. You'll notice all of our swim skill sheets are designed to be quick, illustrative (pictures), concise, and provide actionable corrections.
When you are talking to your participants, be funny, exciting, engaging, and fun. But when describing or giving commands: Be brief, be clear.
YOU CAN DO IT! Encouraging Self-Learning and Motivation
Our ultimate goal in repeating the same scripts over and over again when we're teaching is to enable our participants to remember them when they attempt to do them on their own. Ideally, whenever they go to attempt a front glide or a streamline, I would love their inner dialogue to match the script:
- Arms out in front of meFace in the waterPush off on the surface
If we combine all the things we've reviewed in this 3-part course, this is the most powerful takeaway. Do whatever you can to provide that spark of interest, challenge, and excitement for self-learning. We want our participants to be self-motivated so they seek out new ways to push themselves in the water. If we can get them to WANT to do a front glide well, we can provide them the opportunities and the feedback to promote their learning.
Actionable Tips for Fostering Self-Correction
- Encourage participants to pay attention after they make a mistake so they can correct themselves on the next attempt. GIVE FEEDBACK more than just "Good job."Pair up swimmers and have them correct each other. They'll need to think about what you said is good so they can deliver that feedback to their peer.Avoid giving your participant the answer. Lead them to the water (snicker*) and wait for them to finish with the answer. Example: "What are the 3 things to streamline? Look down, squeeze your ears, and..."
Thank you for spending your time learning about effective teaching, and specifically how it relates to swimming lessons! I'm looking forward to sharing more training and swim lesson specific tips with you soon!
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