Saturday, September 23, 2006

Today was my very last Saturday teaching swimming.

A bit of background. I’ve been a swim instructor since I was 15 teaching over the summer holidays until I finished school when I also started teaching on Saturday mornings. I have been teaching for a group called RAPID SWIM which is a program for people with integration difficulties. So over the four years I’ve taught people with Down Syndrome, Autism across the kids which simply have low muscle tone and coordination difficulties. The lessons are all 1:1. I’ve been the instructor-in-charge of my program for the last three years but finally had to say good-bye because I’ve run out of time to study at all.

It is a bit sad. Some of the kids I’ve taught for the whole 4 years. I’ve known a couple of them half their life! One of the mums gave a framed and engraved photo of me and her daughter today - something to remember.

3 comments:

DP said...

I teach swimming to children with disabilities as well! :-)

Have you lifeguarded in addition to instructing?

Anonymous said...

Yep. Lifeguarded at a pool for three summers. Great Fun.

Anonymous said...

Kudos to you for having the patience to teach kids with Down's. I'm beginning to despair that my brother will ever learn to swim. He's taken lessons and I've been trying to teach him myself for years. He can't seem to get past drinking the pool and staying underwater for inordinately long amounts of time.