kids are so funny! no matter what they do or what age they are (as long as they are less than 14 or not in high school yet) it is always funny. I come home every day with new stories.
so I teach swim classes, and that is the best part of the summer. you are in the water, you have company, and you get to see the progress of your students as the summer go along. this monday was the beginning of the session and I got a new student in my class who was afraid to put his head under water. He's three, and his parents told me they were worried that his fear would keep him from swimming for a while. I took it extremely slow on monday, and didn't make him go under water. However, the next day I made him go under: I put his head under water myself so he didn't have much of a choice. It may sound a little harsh, but if he can't put his head under, he won't be able to swim, and so I was pushing him so he would start trusting himself in the water. well by day three, he was putting his entire head
under water all by himself (while holding onto the wall so he wouldn't float off and start drowning). and I started letting him go more and more as I pushed him to the wall on both wednesday and thursday. the most amazing part was on thursday when I pushed him towards the wall and totally let go for a good 2 feet. he used all the skills we had been working on to get to the wall all by himself! and he didn't even freak out that I had let him go because he was too busy swimming. I asked him why he hadn't told me he was a good swimmer and he said, "well I didn't know I was such a good swimmer!"
another little boy in the same class i have had for 3 weeks now, and after day 2 of the first week he became deathly afraid of being off the wall at all. But I'm gaining his trust slowly. He used to cling onto me as hard as he could, but now when I tell him he has to let go of me, he begrudgingly does (although his hands still hover over my arms in case he has to grab onto me all of a sudden). to do "superman arms" off the wall on their backs (which is one of the hardest thing for little kids to do) I tell them to reach for my whistle, which I wear around my neck so that they are reaching their arms over their head toward me. superman arms are arms above your head so you can glide off the wall, and reaching up towards my whistle accomplishes the act as well as any. So this boy who nearly won't let go of me always tries to grab my whistle at the end of class when he climbs out of the pool and after he gives me a goodbye high five. It's so cute! I wouldn't let him do it thursday, so he started talking, but I couldn't understand his quick 3 year old talk and then at the end of it all, he said he had tricked me, and I just laughed like he had.
It's so easy to amuse the three year olds :)
I also love my level 2 class, where the kids mainly know how to swim and I'm trying to get them comfortable in deeper water. They all love swimming out to me and showing me how great swimmers they are. One of the boys though is very hard to please when it comes to games. Boden does not want to play any of the games I say we will play and is not afraid to tell me. But when I ask him what he wants to play instead, he never has an answer. I't almost disheartening because when I say class is over most of the students normally are a little sad about it but Boden cheers and sometimes doesn't even give me a goodbye high five. I hope he's joking but he's 6, so perhaps he isn't. There is another girl in that class who is older and taller and has less swimming experience, so I had to move the class to even deeper water so she is forced to swim instead of just walking along the ground. She was terrified once we moved and even started crying because she was so resistant to being in deep water. But I think I gained her trust by the end of class on thursday when I said that I thought she could do it and she didn't need to worry about not being able because she was more than capable of swimming. I only hope I can get her comfortable and swimming by the end of next week because I won't be her teacher for much longer and I want her comfortable before she gets a new teacher and has to go through the whole trust issue with her new teacher again. I believe I can do it, but there is a lot she has to do as well with the trust and the trying and the practicing. I'll let you know how it goes next time I blog.
the one other funny thing I found out about my parent child class (which is where the parents are in the water with their infants up to 3 year olds) is one of the moms is mormon and really good friends with my mom because of cub scouts. I didn't find this out til friday when my dad came home and told me, but it's still cool to find out at all.
kids and teaching are my passion for the summer. You'll probably end up hearing a lot more about my kids and what I'm teaching. I mean, I do it 40 hours a week, so what else do I have to talk about anyways?
ps, here's my awesome tan lines from three weeks of work:
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