There is a family of three girls that come to the pool for private lessons. I teach the two older girls, while another instructor teaches the youngest.
Now this instructor is fairly new at the teaching biz, so she has yet to refine a certain quality necessary for teaching.
It has been three weeks and she has done very little to further this little girls understanding of how to float.
It is a simple manipulation of wording that is the reason for her failure.
She says "Do you want to do a float with me?"
Perfectly fine phrase. However what she should be saying is "we're going to do some floats."
I discovered while swimming past her lesson last week that she spent an entire half an hour asking this little girl for permission.
An eighteen year old asking a five year old for permission. There's something very wrong with that image.
So I offered to take her for ten minutes at the end of the class to see if I could get something out of this girl who had taken to saying "NO NO AND DOUBLE NO" to everything the other instructor asked of her.
I pick the girl up and take her out into the middle of the shallow end. Immediately the little girl starts barking out orders. I look her dead in the eye and say "I am the boss. Do a float or we're not playing a game."
And whaddaya know? The girl can float.
It's a common error in a new instructor to ask for permission. We believe that because we are responsible for some one's child for half an hour that we have to treat them like a guest.
So we paddle around in the shallow end cooing in sickly sweet voices to these children, bowing our heads apologetically when the child cries.
Children cry. Children laugh. Children scream. And yet we cower.
So here is this new instructor battling with herself on how to deal with this child. When she touches her the girl screams, which automatically means that she has hurt her, not that the child is screaming as a way to get her to back off.
But we can't give kids the right to control their environments and set their own boundaries. They're fucking five years old. How can they possibly know what is safe and unsafe for themselves? We are the bosses of them, we've been around longer, we know that the edge of the tot dock is inches from their bouncing feet. We know that water in the lungs is a bad thing. We know how to hold our breaths, we know how to float. We know that we have to teach them.
So why are the kids in control?
I'm not saying punch a baby out when they scream. I'm saying be firm.
The Instructor came up to me after the class and said "I'm not going to tell her I'm the Boss. I'm not going to tell her she has to do a float or we can't play a game. That's mean."
It may appear mean, but I did not yell at her, or call her names. I said plainly in my regular voice, I am the Boss. Because I am. And now she knows, and now she'll behave.
Besides it's much worse to skate through eight weeks of lessons and have nothing to account for than giving a firm statement and then getting results.
I used to pull that at camp all the time. It's a time waster. You stand around with the kid and say 'what do you want to do?' and Little Johnny does nothing, because he don't know what there is to do in the water. So when the parent takes Little Johnny away they seem puzzled. They know they've been played but they don't know how, because Johnny did dick all, and there was a clear 'attempt' from the instructor to do something.
So tricky.
However, after a few months of teaching everyday, I started to gain confidence in my ability to know and to teach, so I started calling the shots. Immediately the success rate of my classes increased.
Here are some things I've noticed...
- Skilled Instructors rarely bob their heads like pigeons when they talk to parents. The bob is like a minion bowing to their trigger happy king who enjoys a game of Johnny Whoops with his guillotine. An Insecure Instructor will smile meekly and bob their head ever so slightly. Sorry sorry sorry, I'm teaching your kid, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, please like me so that you don't complain to my boss.
- Skilled Instructors speak with their regular voice. They crouch down to the childs eye level, not bend down. And they speak to the child in simplified but not dumbed down language. Insecure Instructors say something like "Okay Jane? Wanna just go sit over there? And maybe we'll play a game?"
- Skilled Instructors know how to build trust with the child. They don't sabotage their own class by letting a child go mid-float before they're ready. Kids remember that shit.
- The ability to talk to paranoid parents is an art. One I have not refined.
- Insecure Instructors are just that. Insecure. We have the knowledge in our brains, we're aware of the methods of how to convey it, but fuck, what if I'm wrong? What if the parent was an old instructor? What if the kid doesn't get it?
And the Parents. There's a dissection better saved for another time. Probably needs a few entries to go over the entire world of parents who believe in their core that little Jimmy is Gifted.
Now, the instructor I mentioned at the beginning isn't nearly as neurotic. She's just new at this and hasn't been allowed the time to hone her skills. She'll soon grow confidence and Oh The Places She'll Go.
In the meantime, I hope she learns the art of staying afloat.
