Just keep swimmin’, just keep swimmin’

Yesterday was Baby B’s first swim class (it runs every weekday evening this week and next week), and it went just okay. It’s supposed to consist of little lessons in skills (kicking, laying back in the water, etc.) as well as games and songs to make it all fun.

Well, from the conversation between two pool workers that I overheard, it appears as though someone made a mistake and they didn’t realize that the class was the Level 1 (Parent and Baby) class, so they had NOTHING age-appropriate prepared. That would have been fine, but the instructor never really took charge of the class — she never addressed the entire class, never told us we were starting (we just happened to be in the right place), never welcomed us, never introduced herself. We had to find out her name by asking her ourselves. She never admitted that she had nothing prepared and instead casually went from child to child doing different skills like kicking and blowing bubbles in the water.

I didn’t want a lot of structure to the class, as the kids are all 3 or under, but some kind of structure would have been nice. Maybe introducing ourselves would have been good. (The class has just 6 or 7 kids in it, so this wouldn’t have been difficult.) The instructor told The Husband that she’ll have to prepare some songs for today, so we’ll see if she comes through. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for last night, but I hope she steps it up tonight. When I saw her working with some older kids before our class started, she really did seem to be doing a good job with them, so she definitely has potential.

Even if this class turns out to be a dud, I figure that we’re at least getting our money’s worth because the class cost is less than what it would cost for all three of us to go to the pool ten times (which is the number of classes we have). Every bit of exposure to the water that she can get is good, so at least this is giving us the opportunity.