Oh, Joe . . .

Nothing could have prepared me for the disastrous time I had at the Y this morning while I was subbing for Joe!  Fortunately, it was only my first class - Advanced Swim Crew.  Oh, my . . . First of all, I have never swam competitively.  I was told that a "50" was two laps - by three different staff!  It's not.  A "50" is one lap - and I had six children tell me that repeatedly this morning.  Then there was the not-so-funny child who pushed another child into the pool.  Can you say "dumb idea"?  I said, "Time out."  If looks could have killed . . . Add to that - the worst strokes I have ever seen!  I mean - we're talking beyond bad - this was ADVANCED swim crew!  No one who knows anything about swimming would ever do their back crawl one arm at a time, but I had six kids who did!  Can you do freestyle without a bent arm?  Six kids thought so - they were wrong!  Watching them swim was more painful than nails being pulled down a chalkboard! So what am I going to do next week?  Well, I'm going to start off by trying to find Joe - he may be in country - and get his approval to do 40 minutes of stroke drills.  I already have some nasty ones in mind - and I've never swam competitively, remember?  If he doesn't respond, I'll go to my supervisor because I see no reason to make a class swim BAD strokes when I can teach them so much more with a few strategic drills.  Stay tuned . . . 

Of course, that was only the first class.  The second class consisted of five delightful young girls.  For some unknown reason, the deck manager decided to do an evaluation on me during that time (we get them quarterly) - while I was subbing for a class I've never actually taught before.  You'll be glad to know I got a rave review!  The only "improve" comment was I did not stop class on time - because I didn't remember what time class ended!  Ah, they survived five extra minutes with me!

The last class I was able to teach with my friend Ashley.  We always have fun together and we only had two out of five students show up.  Awesome day because one of the adults nailed the back crawl for the first time ever in her life way better than the entire ADVANCED swim crew.  

Back to that, eh?   Maybe I'd better stop . . .