Joseph - on teaching

Cross-Cultural Experience

My first day teaching swim lessons was a disaster. In my first class I was immediately confronted with fifteen unruly six-year olds who were thrilled to be in the water but weren’t interested at all in listening to an instructor, and try as I might I could not keep their attention for more than thirty seconds. If I stopped to yell at one child, another three would jump off the walls and meander throughout the pool. I resorted to blowing my whistle, normally just a safety mechanism, but even then none of the kids listened to me. In my second class I realized that years of competitive swimming cannot prepare anyone to persuade a child to put his face in the water. I spent twenty minutes yelling at one boy to submerge his head, not realizing that this process required patience and understanding over an extended period. By the end of the day I was exhausted, but more importantly, I was frustrated. I had collapsed under the pressure and let my classes spin out of control; I had no developed any rapport with my pupils and had lost my temper too many times. I felt like a failure.

My first teaching was not in a new environment, as I had worked at this pool for two years prior to my promotion to swim instructor, and had been a member there for as far back as I can remember. I was still surrounded by the same staff, friends who I had known for years. Competitive swimming had been part of my life for almost a decade at the time, and I knew swim technique as well as anyone. However, the experience of leading a class, of working with children, was entirely new terrain for me and at first I felt vastly overmatched and overwhelmed. I was suddenly on the other side of the teacher-student divide and I felt uncomfortable there.

Happily I was given new classes after the first day and got a chance to make a better first impression on my students. I realized immediately that I had to establish myself as the boss and never let any swimmer get out of control. The first weeks served as a sort of trial by fire as I struggled to help out each child and still run the class. I found that I had to learn every name or I could never exercise control over an individual troublemaker. I experimented with drills and reached back to my technical background to support myself. I also learned about leadership; I recognized that the true leaders are the most focused and intense group members, that they set a high standard for themselves and demand the same dedication from those under them. Instructing classes of children did not come naturally and I was constantly assessing my efforts. Soon, however, I had adapted to the rhythm of each class, and I began to relax in front of my swimmers.