This moment’s feeling

How I wound love to live in this moment for ever. This beautiful feeling of happiness I can feel circling my mind and flowing through to my heart – passing through my blood stream.

This past week has been a challenge. In fact, the last five months have been a challenge. I began working as a swimming teacher and my life has changed immensely. This week particularly I have felt as if this job is one of the best things to ever happen to me. I’ve been brought to tears, got more kicks in the crotch and boob grabs than your usual job, been tested to my limits, and through all of it I feel so incredibly fortunate. What makes my job is seeing children faces turn from concern or distress to cheerfulness. The smiles of my kids are playing through my mind as we laugh together and it makes me happy. It really does. This is what makes me happy.

I look back on where I began with such little knowledge, and I see myself now – the incredible progress I have made, and my will to continue learning. I am proud of myself. I am so proud. In this moment nothing could make me happier. Right now I know that my hard efforts have paid off and will continue to if I keep working hard.

To summarise briefly, I have been working with 8 classes of students each Saturday morning for 2 terms. And the students who I’ve been with have really grown on me and I feel that they’ve become fond of me. I feel this through the disciplinary aspect of my class. I have many students who listen to me and love to participate in activities with me. In fact, today I worked with a student I had never met before who was in tears when we met. I smiled and introduced myself, and instantly she smiled back and was hardly reluctant to get in the water with me. Her mum was concerned for her which I could see on her expression. I had a fun class with her, sang songs and played games; she really loved being in the water with me. Each time I looked up her mum had a ginormous smile across her face and a look of relief in her eyes. Nevertheless, I arrived at work last week to find out I would no longer have these 8 classes on a Saturday as I’m training in a new program. Breaking this news to some of the kids was harder to say than I thought it would be. A new teacher took my classes and I instructed her on the attitudes and strengths of my students.

I arrived at work this morning at 730am and my deck supervisor had informed me that my first class of students were not happy with the new teacher and that they wanted me back. She said they loved how I worked with their kids, and both kids and parents had become attached to me. Hearing this filled me with little sadness, however I also finally felt like I was doing something right. For so long I spent wondering if I was a good teacher, and it’s not really a question one can ever answer – but this made me feel that little bit more confident that I was truly a part of someone’s life and that I had made a positive difference for them.

Other positive influences this week included one of my dearest students. Her parents are so precious and I absolutely adore their family. I spoke to my student’s mum mentioning that I wouldn’t be returning to the class, she was upset by the news but excited about my new opportunity elsewhere in the pool. I mentioned that her new teacher was nice, and she replied “they’re all very nice, but you are very special to Ella”. Beautifully, beautifully heart warming.

Other delights included a mum whose baby I was working with. I’m only new to baby teaching and she has been lovely. She is open to her child having a relationship with me and she’s comfortable with me around. A few days ago I said hello to her baby and she said to him, “you like Julia, don’t you?” Adorable boy. Similarly I had a child around 2 on Friday morning who usually hated jumps. But when I was helping he would have a turn. His mum turned to me and said “usually he dislikes these a whole lot but he’s doing them, I think it’s because you’re here”. On the same day a very shy girl who took a long time to speak to her old teacher started smiling and playing with me. This I was surprised by as I’d been told she wasn’t too eager on new people, but it is such a lovely feeling when shy children are comfortable with you.
My final anecdote is of a father and baby who has been in the class I’ve been training in for 2 months. He’s been there each week and I find that most parents are wary of me because
I’m a) young and b) new. However this father was the total opposite. Each week he’d ask how my progress was going and would encourage me to run the class. He’s sit with me and talk about teaching kids. A truly supportive father which is really beautiful to see.

All these different things make me happy. They stick in my mind and remind me of how far I have come and, excitingly, how far I have to go.
The journey ahead may be tricky but I can do it. Always remember, you can do hard things.

Teaching

Training to be a teacher is a thousand times more difficult than I had expected. Leaving school I believed teaching was a simplistic career where the teacher did little, despite what I had heard. Now that I am immersing myself in the culture of education I am grasping the holistic perspective of the tasks and wonders that come with this profession.

At university I am studying to become a primary school special educator, but on the side I am practising as a children’s swimming teacher. Foolish me thought how simple this job would be, but as the months go by I reflect upon how difficult it has been and how it gets a little easier each day.

Teaching swimming differs entirely based on the age levels I’m working with. The lowest class I work with is from 3 years old upwards which includes children who have been in a baby swimming program and children who have never swam before in their lives. In this year level, my goal is to teach my students how to be comfortable immersing their heads under water – without a ring or noodle. This past week I worked with 6 students for half an hour five days in a row, who by the end of the week were all able to achieve this task. In my role as a swimming teacher this has been one of my greatest achievements. In my ordinary school term classes lessons are weekly therefore it’s more complicated as the children have been away from the pool for 7 days. My wish and aim for these children is to have engrained the learning principles taught the week before so strongly in their minds that when they return they know where we left off.

One of my littlies this week was a young girl of the age of four or five. Two years earlier a swimming teacher at a different centre had pushed her head under the water. This had traumatised her from water; her mother could not wash her hair in the bath or shower for a year. On Tuesday this young girl came into my pool and worked with a different teacher who, to keep it brief, at the end of the class the young girl left in tears. Her mother was not impressed. A day later I worked with her myself. In the shallow water she was comfortable, yet in the deep water she refused to get in. By the end of our class on Wednesday, I had worked with her in getting back into the deep water and by Friday she was putting her whole head in the pool. Her mother had such appreciation for what I had done and how I had approached the situation with her daughter. Thinking about the happiness of her and her daughter is a true reason why I love my job. Knowing that the way I act and speak to adults and children can make a differences in their lives, and possibly save them one day in an emergency in water is what keeps me going.

The older classes that I worked with this week were developing kicking, propulsion and breath control. On Tuesday I knew that I had to pick up my game with these children; classes were slow, swimming was poor and my authority was being tested. I’ve learnt the key to fixing this is rotations; continual swimming so that students do not have the time or opportunity to mess around, they know what they’re there to do and they do it. Older kids can be tricky but if I keep a firm ground with them and let them know that I’m there to help them achieve set tasks and advance to higher levels of swimming I too can achieve great things.

Teaching takes time. This week especially I have learnt that instructions have to come in small doses. Sure, with arm circles students need to point their toes, splash their feet, keep their chins down, blow bubbles, have flat hands, splash at the back, roll their head on their shoulder and take a breath – but I simply cannot tell them to do all these things in one setting. With the time set, practising one of these tasks at a time in as many laps across the pool as possible is crucial. In my instruction, I need to keep it to telling students one thing to fix in each class until they have mastered it. If I’m focusing on a child’s breathing then I will not remind them of their kicking because they’re not thinking about their kicking, they’re thinking about breathing. When that task of breathing becomes natural then the rest will follow, as with other cues.

It’s amazing to think just a few months ago I had none of this knowledge but I’m slowly learning more and more. I am absolutely grateful for this chance to practice teaching. Among many things I have learnt time, class and behaviour management, class preparation, to communicate with other teachers, and how students learn in a real setting as opposed to my numerous textbook chapters on it in my bookshelf.

Julia