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Swimming in the 21st Century at the
Rose E. Schneider Family YMCA
W
hen you sign yourself or your
children up for swimming lessons
at the Rose E. Schneider Family
YMCA this spring, you’ll be getting the most
comprehensive swimming lessons around.
Why? Just as the math work your kids bring
home looks a lot different than when
you went through school, so does
the current educational approach
to swimming.
“It follows along the stages
of life and everyone starts at the
same point regardless of how old
they are,” said Karen Guise, Senior
Program Director. “Teaching swimming
used to be guided discovery; now it’s
more about safety, jumping in and
returning back to your safe zone.”
The benefits of teaching
swimming this way are multifold.
First, everyone moves through
the same stages, so
they won’t have
to repeat classes if
their progress gets
interrupted by life changes, such as moving to a new
home. People can pick up where they left off in the same
stage regardless of how much time has passed.
Second, class sizes will be smaller and more individualized.
Preschool classes are limited to four students, youth classes have
six, and teens and adults have eight to a class. All classes will be
30 minutes in length and the Rose E. Schneider Family YMCA will
be offering an additional timeframe of classes each afternoon.
“Students will get more one-on-one attention because there
will be a better ratio of instructors to swimmers,” Guise said. “A
YMCA Aquatics Task Force was assembled in 2014 to overhaul a
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program that really hadn’t changed in the last 20
years.”
In addition to being a more thorough, more
efficient swimming instruction program, the Rose
E. Schneider Family YMCA’s own instructors have
a proven track record
of water safety and
longevity. New
instructors shadow
these seasoned veterans
before they are approved to teach on their
own. All of the instructors are certified in CPR/
AED, First-Aid, and Administering
Emergency Oxygen.
“All of our instructors have
YMCA Swim Instructor Certifications
and have 16 hours of classroom
training behind them, going over the
fundamentals of the program, lesson
planning and working on their teaching
skills,” Guise explained. “The new program
really focuses on safety around water. For
members who grew up with or remember our
Polliwog classes, this is not the same program at all.”
For more information on all of the programs at
the Rose E. Schneider Family
YMCA or to sign up for spring
swim classes (beginning March
25 for members, or April 1 for
non-members), go to rose.
bcfymca.org online or call at
724.452.9122. It is located at
2001 Ehrman Road in Cranberry
(16066).