In a normal year, The Woodlands employs approximately 350 lifeguards. This presents a tall order when it comes to training.
The team strives to maintain consistency among its sizable staff. It largely accomplishes this through the lifeguard coordinator, who oversees department-wide training and plans in-services to be taught by instructors at all 14 facilities.
To put all 350 lifeguards through their training, the township normally holds 15 lifeguard classes of 30 to 40 students each. These sessions take place from December through July. Once the pandemic became a fact of life, this training scenario was no longer possible.
This year, the township operated seven of its 14 pools and kept 150 guards on staff. It also provided lifeguard training, with several safety measures in place. Class sizes were limited to 18 students, each led by two instructors. They were then broken up further so no more than 10 people occupied a space and could practice socially distancing.
Students wrote their names on their masks and received their own adult and infant manikins to last throughout the class. At the end of each day of instruction, manikins were sanitized and marked with name tags to prevent confusion about whom they belong to. After the group completes the class, the faces and lungs on each manikin are changed.
Maintaining standards
To enable so many classes, the township needed more lifeguard instructors. Several existing staffers trained for that role to fill the void, building a team of three certified lifeguard instructor trainers and 25 lifeguard instructors. This allowed the township to increase sessions with minimal impact on payroll.
Throughout the season, the team was able to maintain its rigorous auditing schedule. Each facility is audited once a week by a zone leader, who oversees multiple facilities.
Pool supervisors also must perform three different audits per week on their own facilities and prepare reports on the findings and areas for improvement. In addition, four of the pools underwent auditing by external auditing services this year.
Every lifeguard is meant to be audited at least three times per season. Despite the hardships brought on by the pandemic, individual lifeguards were audited an average of 4.5 times in 2020.
The Woodlands also adds some fun into its training. Lifeguards participate in competition practices every year — one between facilities within the township (internal), and another against opponents from other jurisdictions (external). Preparation involves weekly training so they’re up to the more extreme scenarios. This year, the external competition wasn’t possible, but the township did hold its internal games.
