Our Blog - Page 4 of 5 - Smart Moves Swim
Is Your Business a “Social Business”?
According to Hootsuite™ “becoming a social business involves integrating social media across departments, teams, and business functions.” The goal to becoming a successful social business is to have Social Organization. Defined by Hootsuite™, Social Organization “occurs when a company has an organization-wide governance model and has implemented a single social media policy and strategy across the organization.”
Quality Control at Your Swim School
One of the key positions in your swim organization is a deck supervisor. The deck supervisor is a key element in quality control and in maintaining harmony within your swim environment. They are held to a higher professional standard because they directly represent the voice of the owner in the judgements they have to make during their shifts. The deck supervisor has many key responsibilities. They are a liaison between the parent and teacher, they make sure that everyone is teaching to the same standard, they make sure classes start and end on time, they supervise the instructors and their classes, overlook teacher’s lesson plans prior to shifts and make necessary adjustments and much more. To ensure an outstanding performance from your desk supervisor, make sure that you train them well on all their duties and responsibilities and that they know very well what their job description entails. Do you have a written list of what you expect from a deck supervisor?
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Foundational Reminders
As swim teachers, repetition is key. Whether it’s the skills that are repeated for the children to master, songs with purpose or even the act of teaching daily, we must make sure that staff does not get complacent from doing classes over and over again. As children progress through the session, it’s important to make sure the staff remains on point and are always one step ahead and being proactive.
Make sure staff prepares individual lesson plans and write quick notes about each child they teach. They should check in with their supervisors before and after each shift.
Mini staff workshop reminders are essential refreshers that show a great benefit in keeping the staff fresh on the curriculum. No matter how advanced a swimmer might be, it is important to focus on basics and fundamentals and make sure that the staff carry it through the entire session.
Here are some simple reminders that yield great results!
For the Waterbabies and Parent Tot classes, reminders for parents to always have shoulders under for correct holds.
For pre-school classes, Great Beginnings Lead to Great Finishes! Push off from the stairs, the platform, or the wall, rather than letting go and dropping or jumping. Eyes and ears in first before pushing off into, not over the water. These key points set the child up to start each swim with a proper forward momentum.
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Things That Lead to Running a World Class Swim School:
Your curriculum organization is extremely important. Having a learn to swim program stemming from Waterbabies and pre-school ages accumulates a large database of information pertaining to activities, drills, safety, skills, and stroke progressions, to name a few. The easiest way nowadays is to have your curriculum in an online database which allows you to have everything in one place. This kind of easy access gives you the freedom to provide your teachers with instructional videos for training, as well as having them create lesson plans in a flash! You stay organized and up to date this way!
Use of equipment is very important through teaching. Whether it’s doing an assisted glide to reach for a toy or playing the ball game, equipment use has many benefits. Let’s take the ball game for example: getting the li’l swimmers to blow their bubbles for the balls to pop up, then glide to reach for a ball which puts them in a proper horizontal position, while catching the ball and returning it to the bucket, allows them to have hand/eye coordination and be able to move through the water (with the parent of course) in a comfortable position. For a more advanced swimmer who’s learning to float on their back, the use of hugging a kick board gives the child a sense of security, while aiding them with some buoyancy to get them in that proper horizontal position. Equipment uses have many variations and the possibilities are endless!
One last tip is to make sure your curriculum is inclusive on learn to swim, safety skills including personal survival skills.
The Not So Serious Corner:
Should refrain from sneezing during flip turns…😀
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There’s Always Room for Learning and Improvement!
Running a business takes a massive commitment not only with time but with learning. Whether it’s the trends on social media or running a day to day business, there’s always room for learning and improvement. In today’s day and age, we are overwhelmed with the amount of readily available information that is out there on the web, and who’s to say it’s always the right thing to guide us. That’s why, as swim school owners we have built a community to share from experience what has helped us achieve our success and sustain it and we are there to advise one another.
Here are some great reads:
1. WORK RULES: Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Bock, Laszlo
Building a great culture
Finding Exceptional Candidates
Building a Learning Institution
2. What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand Building Principles That Separate The Best From The Rest
Yohn, Denise Lee
Culture Drives the Business
Great Brands Start Inside
Great Brands Sweat the Small Stuff
3. Uncontainable: How Passion, Commitment and Conscious Capitalism Built A Business Where Everyone Thrives
Tindell, Kip
Building and Maintaining strong Foundations and Principles in the Business Culture
1 Great Person = 3 Good People
Communication IS Leadership
Advanced swim tip of the day!
When breathing in front crawl, one goggle should be in the water and one should be above to maintain proper alignment!
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Why the Proper Equipment is so Important in the Role of Teaching!
Swim equipment has come a long way! Not too long ago swimmers only had pull buoy’s and kick boards to aid them in bettering their strokes and in gaining stroke strength within the water. Nowadays there are alignment snorkels, a vast array of paddles and fins that are even stroke specific. Our feature today is the FINIS alignment board. What’s so cool about this board is that it can be used for the learn to swim and advanced programs. Here are a few ways that your staff can use this board.
For kids who are comfortable in doing a front glide with their head in the water: extend the FINIS alignment board in front, making sure the elbows aren’t locked and do a front glide, then add the kicks to the front glide. If your swimmer is advanced, you can put alignment snorkels with the FINIS board and work on alignment and kicking!
For kids who are learning front crawl to more advanced levels, try doing single arm front crawl with the alignment board, it allows them to keep their alignment in place, to concentrate on the stroke and perform a good side glide with the assist. The drills are endless!
Check out the below video showing clips with step by step instructions from the Smart Moves Swim library. In Smart Moves Swim we have over 250 videos with explanations and step by step instructions on performing the swim activities, skills and drills!
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Train Your Staff With Smart Moves Swim
Here’s a short video showing you how easy it is training your staff with Smart Moves Swim! We provide you with step by step instructions written and in video on how to do the skills and we have our little super fish swimmers demonstrate the activity for you! Check out the link below!
Meeting All Learning Styles
Every child learns differently. Some kids learn by either one or a combination of the following: listening to explanations of a skill or drill (auditory), watching a demonstration of a skill or drill (visual), and physical manipulation from the instructor to perform the skill or drill (kinaesthetic). Train your staff to communicate with their students targeting all three of these learning modalities. These also should be applied in the parent participation classes when teaching parents how to teach their babies & toddlers how to swim.
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