PROGRAM FROM STUDENT, TO APPRENTICE, TO INSTRUCTOR

JENNIFER

We started it a few years ago recognizing a need in our community to develop a new positive place for youth who were aging out of our swim program, this worked out to benefit our program as well. While we are still short staffed, this is a great way to continually reap what you sow by developing current swimmers into our future teachers.

When we first started this idea, we wanted a way to keep our swimmers in our program. Before starting the apprenticeship program, once a swimmer completed all our levels, they would just fall off. Some would move on to swim teams and others to other sports, others didn’t find a new activity to take the place of swimming. So we knew who we wanted to target, we just needed to develop the program for them.

We ran reports of our target swimmers to find the age group that we would be targeting. The average age of swimmers completing the program is 12 years old. We set out to target those swimmers in our database and lead file and found that our target age range for this new program are 12-15 year olds. Upon realizing this, we also knew that they fit into an age group that is underserved for activities in the community. They are too old for most summer camps, they’ve aged out of daycare, and they are in an age group that could use more supervision during the summer when parents are at home and they are left alone. That alone time can lead to trouble, we believed we could help provide a path away from becoming troubled teens.

Wanting to provide a safe space for young adolescents, we also realized we could have a longer retention rate if we developed our program to lead to an apprenticeship after completion of all levels. This would be great service to our community by helping our youth gain leadership and communications skills, develop more work ethics, and work on their compassion for those around them. During the apprenticeship, they have access to our instructor training program, and they get partnered with one of our instructors to learn how to teach. Our offer to their parents was that we would give them someplace safe to be during the summer with character building work, and once the apprentices reach the age of 16 they will be able to move into a paid instructor position. This created a win-win-win situation, the youth had a place to be that was safe, they gained valuable life skills and experience, and we had a set of instructors that we have been working with for years. All of this with the bonus that our swimmers get more water time in classes with an apprentice. We hire instructors at 16 because of their longevity as employees. They will stay with us through high school and stay with us through college, if they attend a local college. With the apprenticeship, our instructors can begin teaching immediately if they have completed their training prior to their birthday.

We have seen many of our apprentices rise to the challenge of leadership in the water and excel in ways that we didn’t anticipate. We have had some apprentices come in that could not differentiate between play time and actual structured teaching. It has created a great learning experience for these young people. Through their successes we have gained better knowledge of what our youth are needing so that we can continue to develop the program. One of our recent successes was when we were able to recognize an apprentice who was excelling in their work. This lead us to convert them into a paid teaching position for two classes a week despite her young age. We would never have used a 14 year old in this capacity before, but after watching her in our apprentice program for 18 months we knew we could push forward with this option. She is one of the few apprentices who have stayed in our program during the school year as well as in the summer. She was ecstatic for the opportunity. Seeing her success has given hope for other apprentices that they too might be able to prove themselves earlier than 16; this extra motivation is needed with some of the apprentices who are struggling to stay in the program. We will continue to monitor her to decide if we can extend more classes to her or any other apprentices in the future. One benefit to this program we did not anticipate has been the reaction of the swimmers and parents of the classes.

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When they see someone that looks like their “peer” in a leadership position in their class, it makes them ask. Our answer is always, “once you finish all of the levels, then we can invite you into our apprenticeship program, too!” It has definitely increased our retention rates and graduate completion numbers. It is not a perfect program, and like all our programs, a continuous work in progress.

If you would like more information or to brainstorm more ideas about this concept, feel free to tag me in a post on the Facebook Owners Group!