It takes someone very special to become a baby and toddler swimming teacher:
- Someone with a love of water and a love of children
- Someone who cares enough about giving babies a gift of complete freedom and pleasure in the water
- Someone who wants to give them something that is both a skill for life and a life-saving skill
- It doesn’t take years of swimming training
- It doesn’t take years of childcare experience or training
- It takes passion, commitment and a willingness to spend several hours in a swimming pool!
And the rewards are amazing. It is no surprise that baby swimming teachers are constantly smiling. Their lives are full of happy parents, babies and toddlers, giggles and smiles.
How amazing to watch a tiny baby and their mother blissfully floating around the pool; or to see a one-year-old take her first few strokes on her own to her mother; to see a two-year-old jump in and swim back to the side unaided; and to see a three year old's huge grin after they have swum their first width.
Baby swimming teachers come from all walks of life and are bound together with a complete love of their job and shared experiences. It’s a fabulous job that still gives you plenty of valuable time to spend with your family. Good swim schools provide excellent training, which usually consists of an intensive course followed by on-the-job training and Puddle Ducks teachers are the most highly trained in the industry.
Beyond this, our teachers can build their skillset further to include our Swim Academy and Aquanatal qualifications.
- Swim Academy teachers teach our primary school-aged children to swim beautifully and love swimming for life. The techniques we use in Swim Academy and our continual learning about the physicality of 4-10 year olds and how they learn to swim is filtered down into our Baby & Pre-School activities – it is obvious to our teachers when a child has been on the Puddle Ducks journey from an early age! Our teachers often see children go from splashing about in our baby classes to swimming 200m+ in Elite Swim Academy and even going on to compete at Club level.
- Aquanatal teachers love their classes! Not only do they get to spend a relaxing lesson helping our mummies-to-be exercise and chill out, they usually get to meet the gorgeous bundles of joy when they come back to our Floaties lessons!
-
Career Potential at Puddle Ducks
Your teaching career will start at franchise level, either as a Puddle Ducks Teacher or Poolside Assistant. From here, the world is your oyster! We know some of our teachers take on the role to fit around their family lives and this is one of the benefits of teaching baby swimming. We also know that some of our teachers become addicted to what is really the best job in the world and for those, the sky is the limit!
Roles within a franchise:
- Poolside Assistant
- Teacher (of any of our three programmes)
- Senior Teacher (at this stage can be considered for roles at Head Office)
- Head of Teaching
Our technical team are continually assessing our teachers around the country and those who stand out are invited to take on extra responsibilities within the Duck HQ Technical Team, helping to maintain the high standards we demand in our network.
Roles within Duck HQ:
- Programme Assessor
- STA Tutor
- Puddle Ducks Tutor
- Super Teacher