just keep swimming

"They say" (and no one really knows who they are) that a teacher is a "jack-of-all-trades!" And after today, I would have to agree. I didn't know what to expect with today's plans but it turned out to be a great yet interesting morning.

Today the littles went for their monthly swim at a public pool. It is about a fifteen minute walk from the school. The whole way there I'm thinking to myself that my great hair day won't be ruined because I'm just going to put it up for an hour and if it gets a little wet that's fine plus the kids have an instructor in the pool teaching them so I'm basically just on kid watch and an extra set of hands when needed.

You know where this is going...

Well...I successfully looked like a drowned rat when the hour was up. Every inch of my head was soaked because the instructor didn't actually get in the pool with them - that was our job! So there I am using every minute of my private swimming lessons from over 13 years ago and all my knowledge of swimming to teach these cuties how to swim on their backs and float with their chins up not tucked down (you sink that way) and I had so much fun! The instructor gave them fun things to play with and tips to improve their swimming but another teacher and I were the ones getting splashed and kicked in the face! Nonetheless, I'm glad that I was able to swim and laugh and race these kids up and down our one lane in the pool with only a few minor collisions along the way. And even though I now have a mop of a head of hair... I had the best morning teaching my kids to swim today!!

The joy of our bonding moment came to a screeching halt when we got into the locker room and I had to wrangle together all the girls to get them showered, dried, changed, packed up and hair dried before heading back to school while I still looked like a drowned rat with wet clothes that were only getting wetter by the minute thanks to my soaking wet hair and body.

But then I sat there drying their hair and braiding it nicely and having little conversations about how well they did swimming and all the fun things we learned about rocks yesterday...and all the chaos of wet hair and clothes flying around the room became meaningless.


"Just keep swimming," I whispered to my self with a smile.