First, it’s important to understand who our substitute instructors are. At the beginning of every season, we interview and hire a select group of subs. Subs are a central part of our team and have been extensively trained in our curriculum. Sometimes our subs are instructors from previous summers, or even one of our managers! They receive the same instruction as our full-time instructors and spend time co-teaching with Jaynie or Christina at the beginning of the season. Because of this, they will follow the same format of the lesson and focus on the same skills as our other instructors. Additionally, they receive notes from the prior instructor so that they know about each student’s strengths and areas of focus.
Even with this strong foundation, sometimes it may feel like a lesson with a sub has slowed your child’s progress. A sub may need to quickly assess a student’s skills during the lessons, which can be done in less than a minute. The trust & connection may also need to be re-established with the new instructor. This can appear to stall a child’s progress and take away from the lesson. However, many children actually enjoy getting to know a new teacher, especially since all of our teachers sincerely enjoy working with children.
Although it can feel frustrating to have a sub, we invite you to see the positives of the situation as well. Your mindset will set the tone for your child, and kids often react and respond based on how you do. Having a sub allows your child to experience a new teaching style, and each instructor has different strengths. Not only can this help your child learn skills in a new way, but it also teaches them flexibility and resilience. We believe that overall, the daily consistency is the key to our program, since it allows students to form muscle memory and get more comfortable in the water—and this is true even if the daily consistency is with a different instructor. We strongly feel that although having a sub is not ideal, the daily lessons are still very powerful and skills are being developed even if it initially might seem that progress has slowed. A great benefit to having subs is that we don’t have to cancel lessons and stop the progress altogether!
With all of this said, we understand and apologize when your child’s instruction involves one or more subs. We hope that you can embrace our program and place your trust in our instructors, knowing that your child is always in good hands. Thank you for teaming up with us to achieve your water safety and swimming goals!
