Hi, My name is Cris Sailers, and I became an instructor shortly after moving to Mason in 2005. At the time, I had two children. My daughter was 3 and a half years old, and my son was 11 months old. Listening to the news one morning, I heard about a young child that had drowned in a local pool, and it concerned me. Like many other parents, my children were active and curious about the world around them. I had taken my kids to the pool earlier that week, when my son fell and couldn’t touch the bottom with his arms extended to be able to breathe above the water’s surface. That was frightening! I knew I needed to do something, or the following summer was going to be miserable.
You see, I had been a nanny for many years (It is how I paid for college as an early childhood education major) and had seen many types of swimming lessons, but they didn’t teach survival. Right after my son fell, I had my daughter signed up for swimming lessons. It wasn’t until I saw a four year old in her class do a swim-float-swim sequence that I realized there was another type of lesson. I had never seen this before. I tracked down that child’s parent to learn about what I had just seen!
I signed my son up for lessons, and decided to become an instructor within a few weeks of his classes. It is that cool of a program! I get to help children learn how to manipulate the water to keep themselves safe and create a love and respect that will last a lifetime.
Thank you for trusting me with your little ones.
