TOT participants will train an additional 80 teachers in the updated SwimSafe 2010 curriculum.
TASC and RLSSA kicked off the SwimSafe 2010 program in Da Nang on Sunday, 25 April with a trainers workshop which provided 22 local swimming instructors with updates on the Swim Safe curriculum and gave them practical instruction in the pool from an RLSSA Senior trainer.
The Workshop was held at the TASC compound and was organized by TASC Da Nang in cooperation with the instructors from the Da Nang Department of Education and Da Nang Life Guard Service. Ms. Maureen Summerhayes, an Australian instructor with over 30 years experience training swimming teachers, came in from RLSSA in Sydney to lead the class.
Course content was presented which addressed changes to last year’s curriculum. Of specific interest to the swimming instructors were changes in the pre-assessment process, the certification test, and the lesson plans. The objective of SwimSafe is to make children water safe, and the 2010 curriculum puts a more focused emphasis on survival swimming skills. As this is the second year of the Da Nang program, lessons learned from last year have been incorporated into the curriculum changes.
The program included a “wet lab” where six children of different abilities helped the RLSSA instructor demonstrate proper training techniques and give the local instructors an opportunity to work in the water with the instructor.
Maureen Summerhayes from RLSSA shared her expertise with our Vietnamese trainers in what was a very successful workshop.
The target for 2010 is again 5000 primary school children in grades P1-P 5. This encompasses children aged 6-11. Older students, aged 10-11, are given practical lessons in resuscitation as well as the basic course in survival swimming and water safety. The program will be run in 10 portable pools set up on primary school campuses with primary school teachers serving as the instructors and one or two beach venues which are managed by the life guards. These 22 instructors will help train an additional 80 swimming instructors during May with the program getting underway the first week of June when summer vacation begins. The majority of the teachers will be returning teachers from last year’s program.
SwimSafe is a collaborative program in child water safety between The Alliance for Safe Children, the Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, and local institutions in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Vietnam.
