I teach kids how to swim, and while we're always having the best time in that short window of two weeks, the kids find new ways to make each moment count, just by saying something silly, or rolling their eyes at some joke I got off of a Popsicle stick. What they don't know is that within those moments, they have also taught me something as well.
Kids make you think. When you're surrounded by 3-12 year olds almost every day, there is always going to be a moment where they say something interesting. For example, we have this frog slide at the pool, and we take the preschool class over to it for fun time. One little boy looked up to one of the teachers and asked, "Aren't we supposed to be flies? Why is the frog spitting us out?" It's those kinds of questions that make you think, and take back to the office and ask the other guards and teachers. That kid was really onto something, and it was only pointed out after he had asked that question.
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Kids also like to pretend they're adults. I'm just going to skip the whole political conversation my Dolphin class (about 9-12 year olds) had about the election, and move onto when they decided to be the teacher instead of the student. One of my girls said that she was already old enough to be a teacher at her school. They all want to grow up too fast, and it only takes a moment of goofiness in the pool to remind them that they're still kids. They've also shown me that even though I try to be the adult in the pool, I'm really just a kid like them. (This was after I was called out on watching cartoons and talking about them with the kids.)
Kids have shown me a new way of explaining something. Sometimes I guess it's better to take a step back, and look at something as how a kid would look like. We have this way of teaching the kids how to move their arms during backstroke, but we've never been able to get it like something fun, like how we describe swimming on the front as ice cream scoops. One of my Otter kids (Around 6-10) told me that our arms looked like a sunset and sunrise. It clicked with the other kids, and they all started giggling as they moved their arms in the correct way, all the way behind their heads.
The last thing I remember the most about kids is that they always find a way to look on the brighter side, even when they are terrified of letting go of the wall. One little girl told me, "If I let go of the wall, and swim to you and maybe further, then I can swim? Miss Mallory, I can show my mommy how I swim when I see her after work!" And they swim out to me, with the biggest smiles on their faces.
