Diverse classes and asking for help.

    Well my loyal readers, imaginary or otherwise, today is day 2 of me trying to update every day. I am hoping that if I have a lot of updates it will entice people to read it at least people will see it on Facebook all the time and be curious what I have to say.
  
    Since I talked about gaming yesterday I suppose I should talk about the water aspect today. Not that those are the only two things I want to talk about here but I figure my first two posts of the blog proper should cover the title.

    Right now I am teaching 3 swimming classes all on different schedules. The one I am going to talk about today is called a "fast track" class which means that it runs from Monday through Thursday for two weeks. This particular class is Red Cross Learn-to-Swim Level 1. Most of the kids in this class when we started would not get their faces wet. Right now on their 6th lesson I can get everyone in the class to get their whole face (if not their whole head) in the water. But that is not what I am talking about today. What I want to talk about is the fact that I would probably not have been able to get anything done in this class if not for one of my students.

    In this class, this was the one student who was not at least a little afraid of the water when the class started. For convenience sake let's call this girl Kate. Kate is a great student but most importantly a great helper. By the second day if class she was offering to demonstrate how to do various skills to the other kids. She helps keep the other kids in line. In one case she kept the smallest kid in the class from going falling into the water. At 9 years old Kate has been a better teaching aid than some adults who have filled that roll and I think she is learning a lot from the experience.

    So why am I writing about this? Simple, before working with Kate I have never had a student who helped me this much in the class. I have always been wary of asking a student to take on as many responsibilities as she has. I want any teachers out there to know how well this can work if you find yourself with a student lime Kate in a class like I have. It is probably one of the best decisions I have made in my time as a swimming instructor.

    (oh and I hope it should be obvious but Kate's name isn't really Kate. I would like to go on record as saying I would never try to endanger one of my students by putting their name online )