My daughter has been lifeguarding rather than teaching lately. I have been swimming during part of her shift lately, but yesterday I just dropped her off and picked her up. When I arrived to pick her up, I pointed out the lifeguard to my 6 year old son. We noticed that she was a different girl. I was looking around trying to find my daughter when my son said, “There she is!” And sure enough, my daughter was in the water, teaching a lesson.

She was excited, because lifeguarding makes her want to get in the water so bad she can taste it. Also, she got to teach a couple private lessons, which pay much better than group lessons.

She shared with me the challenges of one of her students. He was a young boy, 6 or so, who would eagerly copy everything my daughter showed him to do. The problem was when he would immediately start trying to float on his back while she was still telling him what to do. My daughter learned not to directly model what to do, but to tell him everything they would do before sending him on his way to practice the new skill.

Her student was eager to swim a length of the pool, but my daughter wasn’t sure he was ready. She broke the length of the pool up into digestible chunks, and before they knew it, she and her student had made it all the way to the deep end. He asked her how deep the water was. “Nine feet,” she told him. “Hey, Dad!” her student yelled, “Can you stand up in nine feet?”