It’s the first day of classes and you get to the pool a little early to receive your class rosters and hear your boss give you an energetic pep talk. As you put on your instructor shirt you have flashbacks to previous sessions of when you are standing under the pool deck shower trying to keep warm between classes. You embrace the fact that you will probably be doing it again this session as you will inevitably get cold. You grab your clipboard of class rosters filled with names that you have yet to match to faces and start to head out to the pool deck. Wait, almost forgot, you need a bag. You quickly walk back into the guard room and fill up a bag with all of the swim lesson essentials: 2 child-size kick boards, a marshmallow floaty stick, float belts, diving rings, a spare pair of goggles, some water toys, and of course, rubber duckies. Yes, rubber duckies are essential in teaching little kids how to swim, trust me. All packed and packed and ready to go, you head back out onto the pool deck and head over to the meeting spot for your first class. You see anxious parents waiting to see who their child’s instructor will be, and kids standing next to them either very excited with their goggles already on, or crying because they don’t want to get in. As you call off your roster, one by one the little ones are shooed over by their parents, and you start trying to match those names to the approaching faces. You sit down on the edge of the pool and go through introducing yourself, learning each other’s names, and of course, safety rules. You do your best to get a head nod from everyone that they will, yes keep their hand on the wall when not with the teacher, but sometimes all you will get back is a blank stare and you have to hope that what you just said registered somewhere in their mind. Next, you have to settle the ground rules on splashing (which comes about because, for some reason, kids love to splash their instructor) and tell them that you don’t splash other people if they don’t want to be splashed. As class goes on it consists of blowing bubbles, getting faces wet, a head bob for the daring ones, back floats, front floats, kickers, and of course scoopers. Scoopers (aka doggy paddle) comes with asking each child their favorite flavor ice cream to which some respond with simply a color and you just have to go with it. This is when you break out the duckies. Everyone picks a ducky to throw a few yards away and do their scoopers to go get it. But be warned, once you hand out the duckies, there’s no going back. So its suggested that you do it towards the end of class. Once those 30 minutes are almost up, you lead the kids out of the pool, follow the leader style, and over to a slightly deeper spot where they get to jump into the pool as a reward for being good during class. As you dismiss them all back to their parents with a high five as they go, you tell them they did great and that you will see them tomorrow. After that, it sets in that you have another class to teach in 5 minutes and do the math as to how long you can go stand under the shower to warm up for. After receiving a “let’s go” look from your boss, you depart from the warm shower and head to the next class, ready to be the fun swim instructor those kids will remember forever.

A few hours and many classes later you are finally done teaching for the day. You are dripping wet, cold, hungry, tired and already accepting how dry your skin is going to be after soaking yourself in the chlorine for so long. But two weeks later, at the end of the session, and your kids can doggy paddle by themselves, the ones who wouldn’t even get in the water will put their head under, and they come up to you after the last class, say thank you and give you a hug, makes all those things completely and 100% worth it.