The basic tenets of the AMG Swim School instruction program:
SKILL based learning and progression
Continuous instructor training
Smaller Classes. If you haven’t heard it before this, one of the things that sets AMG Swim School apart are the class sizes. For our Youth—4 and below swim levels, we only put 4 students in a class. For Y-5 and Y-6 there are only six per class. This translates into much more time spent with an instructor, more teaching that is tailored to your swimmer, and less time each student spends waiting for instruction.
We’ve witnessed a dramatic change in the speed at which our students learn. In the first six months at AMG Swim School we’ve had plenty of opportunity to watch and learn from our own instructors. With over 14,000 lessons taught, we have a pretty good idea of the power of 4-student classes.
For preschool classes, smaller class size provides benefits for safety and learning. When the instructor must divide his time between individual instruction and insuring safety of all, fewer students in the class makes it easier to insure safe behavior. For more experienced swimmers, instruction can be given by pairs of students resulting in a lesson that is similar to a semi-private lesson of two students in terms of attention by the instructor.
Watch your swimmer in these smaller class size and you will see what we’ve seen—when it comes to swim lesson classes, smaller is definitely better.
No sessions. At AMG you sign up for one month’s worth of lessons at a time. You select the day and time of the lesson for your students swim level and reserve that time for a month—four lessons. If you’d like to have two lessons a week, pick another time during the week and sign up for that one as well. That makes 8 lessons in one month. You are not constrained to a Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday schedule, YOU decide when you want to come.
Each lesson is one half hour in length. Each time you sign up for a set of lessons, your student receives a swim card that allows them to come and practice during a public swim. We encourage this—more time in the water, even playing, means a stronger swimmer that will learn to swim in a shorter amount of time.
As that first month progresses, we will let you know when you should re-enroll for the next month. If you want the same times and days and your student will return at the same swim level, no problem, we reserve the time and days you want with your payment. If you’d like to switch times or days—also no problem. Let us know what you’d prefer and we’ll fit it in if possible. Our current students have priority for re-enrollment for a full week before enrollment is opened to the public.
What? Your student is ready to move up a level? Not uncommon at AMG; it happens a lot faster than at other schools. No problem, we’ll give you a heads-up about a week or so before the event occurs and you can work out the schedule ahead of time. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you get the time and days you want and we’ll try to make sure that the instructor is available to move up with your student. We can’t always guarantee this but we are already working on ways to make it more likely.
SKILL based learning and progression. The AMG Swim School approach is SKILL based progression. That is, the instructor will watch each student and teach them based upon the skills they need to progress the next step. How is this different from previous years? In some ways it is very similar. The real difference is when it comes to progression to the next level; there is no given date for a student to test for the next swim level. Instead, the instructor watches progress and when the student is ready, recommends them for advancement.
Basics first. Again, this sounds like business as usual and to a certain extent it is. Where AMG Swim School differs is that it focuses on true swim form essentials as the basics. Often swim students will reach a level of proficiency that they can't quite seem to get past. They try hard but can't quite reach the next level. This usually results from a swim technique fault that originates from the very early training of the student. It isn't that they were taught the wrong things, they were taught the right THINGS to do but not the right WAY to perform them. At AMG we will make sure that early detection of common swimming technique errors are caught early and corrected when it is a simple adjustment not a major retraining exercise. Quality control experts agree that, in the long run, taking the time to do it right is cheaper and better.
Continuous instructor training. AMG's instructor team trains together to improve their skills for lifesaving as well as student interaction and instruction skills. Experience and training are instructor essentials for the AMG Swim School. Instructors at AMG continuously train with some of the best Swim Coaches in the country through our association with King Aquatic Club here in the Puget Sound. The better informed and trained our instructors are, the better they can train the AMG students - our overriding goal.