Unfortunately, I wasn't very impressed with these lessons at all. I really had high hopes because there was a maximum of 4 kids per class vs the 6 that he had before. And one little girl never did end up coming back after the first day, so there were only 3 kids total in the class. However, the lower number of students did not compensate for the novice teacher. The first day I was ready to switch classes. She was so nervous and barely knew how to interact with the kids. I did give it another day and she did better, but not great. She really had no class organization and she just catered to whichever kid happened to be distracting her at the time. Anyhow, I took a few photos but mostly it was chaos, so there isn't much to write about, except to note that they were big on showing the kids to stretch before getting into the pool, which the other program did not do.
I think the swimming lesson experience it very dependent up on the teacher. I did see some of the other Level 1 classes that looked like they were doing more and the teachers looked more comfortable. Garytt started to ask not to go to swim class or he would say he wanted to go swim with Miss Clare (his swim teacher at Mizzou Rec). I think that was mostly due to the fact that the water at Hickman High School pool was really cold! All the kids had blue lips by the end of class. But, nevertheless, I opted not to make him go the last few days of class, seeing how he wasn't getting much out of it anyhow and it was getting increasingly difficult to entertain Westyn during swim lessons.
My final decision about the two program is that despite the fact that I still think the Mizzou Rec program was asking too much of the kids by requesting they sit perfectly still in the water, it is better to have rules, structure, and a basic lesson plan. The random chaos that was our experience through the city rec department really didn't benefit anyone. So, next year, we will be going to Mizzou Rec for sure!
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