In some of my older blogs, I talked about what it took to be a lifeguard and the people at the pool. Another thing that people may not know about lifeguards is that we actually teach swim lessons as well.
Some people choose to become WSIs which stands for water safety instructor. WSIs are trained specifically for teaching swim lessons. I am not a WSI but I am a WSA or a water safety assistant. WSAs and WSIs are trained in basically the same thing, and do the same things, but WSIs are able to pass kids in swim lessons and get paid more. WSIs are able to get paid up to fifteen dollars an hour if they teach a private lesson but they got paid around 9.50 for group lessons at my pool.
My WSA training pretty much consisted of us learning what to do with each age group and what each level or age group is like to teach. After the training, we were required to watch someone teach a lesson and then help co-teach a lesson with our own lesson plan.
My pool was kind of short of guards to teach lessons so I really only watched one lesson being taught and was then assigned to teach my own lesson. My first day was a disaster. I taught level ones who were all around three and four years old. One of my kids was extremely rowdy and I wasn’t really sure how to control him. He ended up crossing the pool a lot of times. After my first few times of teaching lessons, I learned how to control the kids a lot better and control my schedule a lot better. At the end of the season I had improved a great deal and was actually very good at it.
Throughout my lifeguarding season, I taught around six lessons in four sessions of the swim lessons. I taught five level one classes and one level three class. As I said before, the level ones were almost all three to five years old and my level threes were around seven years old. My experiences teaching swim lessons improved a lot of my skills involving children and it was overall a pretty good experience but sometimes got to be a little stressful and exhausting. (386)
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