As more parents increasingly reached out to the Woodlands Township to discuss their children with special needs, it became more clear to the team that traditional group swimming lessons wouldn’t cut it for everyone.
“We would get all these emails and phone calls and people coming out to lessons [who] had children that needed more specialized or focused attention and lessons,” says Cynthia Roberts, aquatics superintendent for The Woodlands Township.
The facility already offered group lessons, but parents and staff came to realize that instructional format didn’t meet the individualized needs of these children. They sought a different approach.
Meeting new swimmers where they are
Roberts and her team believed that personalized lessons, created on a case-by-case basis, would best serve these children. So they developed the Special Needs Swim Lesson Program, which pairs these individuals with a well-educated and qualified instructor who can help them achieve their goals in a safe and controlled environment.
Putting such a program in place had been a goal of Woodlands Township for many years, but finding the right instructor proved challenging. They needed someone with experience in both swim instruction and working with differently abled children.
Finally, their search yielded somebody whose unique background includes more than 17 years as a swim instructor, along with time as a kindergarten teacher, and parenting a special-needs child. She works with each student and their guardians to set goals for learning new skills and plans to practice them outside of lessons. They could finally start their special needs program two years ago.
Woodlands Township didn’t heavily promote the adaptive lessons. Many learned about it from an open house or word of mouth. In its first year, the program had about 15 participants, Roberts says. Year Two saw about 20 to 25 participants, many of whom were returning.
In addition to designing and teaching individual lessons, the contract instructor handles programming inquiries and registration, which allows for minimal staff involvement and reduces costs, Roberts says. They needed an extra level of frugality, as the special-needs program isn’t as profit-driven.
“Group lessons are where we make our profit,” Roberts explains. “Here, we really just wanted to reach community members that we hadn’t been able to before.”
Also in the spirit of efficiency, the program was designed to fit seamlessly into Woodlands Township’s existing operations. Adaptive individual lessons take place alongside group sessions, rather than being scheduled separately. The private-lesson instructor teaches Monday through Friday in the extra lane space or space by the steps that aren’t being used by the group class. The group sessions take place before the pool opens to the public, and they’re staffed with lifeguards. With the pool staff already there and all the necessary equipment brought out, the private lessons don’t cost extra.
This setup also creates a sense of belong for participants in the Special Needs Swim Lesson Program. The students and instructor seem to prefer being there at the same time as the group classes.
“I think a lot of times [the special needs] population feels separated from the rest of their peers or the activities going on, and this allows them to still be a part of that setting, but receive the attention and training that they need,” Roberts says.
