When young kids are enrolled in swimming lessons it’s easy to wonder how many milestones there are and how they’re being met. You might see their class week to week, and not really notice much change from one to the next. Even so, progress is being made all the time - and progress monitoring is being done by our instructors. In fact, our team is trained in positive reinforcement and understands the importance of celebrating student success. Here’s a little more about our approach.
What Achievements Do We Celebrate?
All of them! Whether a child has mastered a new skill like swimming the length of the pool, or they were very focused in class and practicing active learning, we want to notice it all. The big accomplishments are obviously the most noticeable, especially to an untrained eye, but it’s the little milestones that get children from one big accomplishment to the next.
The other reason we love using positive reinforcement is that it encourages our students to feel proud of their hard work. Just the fact that our instructors notice what they’re doing, and how hard they’re working, gives them a huge self-esteem boost and helps them feel motivated to try new skills.
How Do We Encourage and Applaud Our Students?
Celebrating student achievement comes in many forms. At Hubbard, we have a lot of ribbons we give out for this purpose. Some of the ribbons are more general (e.g. “Awesome job!”) but most of them are very specific (e.g. “I rolled over and floated on my back by myself!”). When a student earns a ribbon in class, an instructor or deck supervisor will loudly say, “Attention, parents, and students! So-and-so rolled over and floated on their back by themselves today!” And everyone in the pool area will cheer and clap for the child. Our students often collect their ribbons or display them in their rooms at home with pride - as they should.
We also recognize achievement (and effort) during our classes. You’ll see instructors giving kids plenty of high-fives, smiles and verbal encouragement for trying their best and learning new skills. Our entire atmosphere is positive and uplifting, which is really the best environment to foster learning and a love of swimming.
We absolutely understand the importance of celebrating student success and make a concerted effort to applaud our students whenever we can (both figuratively and literally) for the past 20 years in the learn to swim industry. And it’s all the better when our students’ parents continue the effort at home, and after class, too. After all, it’s your attention and pride in them that motivates little ones more than anything. Contact us to learn more, or to try out our learn to swim programs.
