My First Ever Work Shift

Oh my goodness.

Today, I had my first ever proper job shift.

As some of you know, I'm a certified swim teacher and as I was lounging around my house this afternoon, I had a family friend text me to say that he was sick and he needed a sub tonight to cover his classes and he asked me if I could.

I figured that this would be a good way to ease myself into teaching on my own  rather than to have my own classes for a first time experience.

I was pretty nervous before I started. Me being me, my mind automatically raced to all the possibilities of things going wrong. Easy enough to say, I psyched myself out.

However, a pool supervisor told me that he would be in the pool with all of the classes today, so if I needed a hand I could call him over to help. That helped me relaxed a bit.

My first class was with an older level, but there was only one girl out of two who showed up.

Honestly, only having one girl to teach boosted my confidence.

I didn't have to jump into a class with six, three years old, kids where half of them didn't listen. I had to teach one girl who was ready to learn, liked to swim and I slowly gained confidence during that first class.

I had a total of five classes in the three hours of my shift, and that's not bad at all.

I was worried that I wouldn't have enough things to do with all the students, but I ended up having plenty to do with almost all of the classes.

When it came to my last lesson, it was a private lesson for a little boy in one, I started to run out of things to do, but he was pretty interested in the bottom of the pool, so for the last two minutes a let him see the bottom of the pool in between two last floats.

I was impressed by most of the kids attention. Of course, it's harder with the younger kids, but all of the older kids were great!

I had a younger group with a little boy and a little girl in the group, but the little boy's aunt and grandmother were also at the pool. Usually that's no problem, but his aunt came over to talk to him during the lesson and that completely derailed and distracted him and he wouldn't listen to me anymore.

I couldn't tell the aunt that I need her to leave in fear of seeming rude, so I said "Hey, hop back in, bud! The lesson isn't over yet!" and the aunt understood that she had to step back for a little while longer and she understood that.

My only other troubled time was when I had six students from the ages of three to five. One of them was not listening to me at all, he didn't want to participate in the class and do what everyone else was doing and the supervisor saw me struggling a little bit, so he came over to help me out with him.

I taught the other five kids while he dealt with that one student.

Overall, I think I had a pretty good first shift.

I was nervous about so many things, but I got over those as more lessons went by and there was other staff around if I needed any help.

Your first shift is always the one you get the most worked up about whether it's with nerves or anxiety, but as soon as you get it over and done with, you realize that it isn't nearly as bad as you thought it could be.

I'm really happy that I took this shift, I feel more comfortable teaching in the water (granted I haven't made any of my own lesson plans) and I feel as though this is a job that I can do well.


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