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Students learn valuable lessons during ‘Safety Around Water’ training at Y pool

T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Rogers Elementary fourth graders get a lesson on water safety from instructor Connie Klaas on Tuesday at the Y.

As many longtime residents know, four children drowned swimming in the Iowa River back in 2012. The event was a tragedy for the Marshalltown community, but it has also led to an increased emphasis on water safety and knowing what to do in an emergency.

The “Safety Around Water” or SAW program, which is a one-hour lesson at the YMCA/YWCA for Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) fourth, sixth and eighth graders, is distinct from the more comprehensive “Teach Them to Swim” initiative, but it still provides students with the basic details on what they need to know to keep their heads above water and get back to safety.

Shelley Lechnir serves as the aquatics director at the Y and gave an introductory speech to Rogers students before they hit the pool on Tuesday. The overall goal, she said, is to prevent anything like the aforementioned tragedy from ever happening again in Marshalltown.

“Swimming has obviously been my life passion, and it’s extremely important to me and teaching every child and giving every child an opportunity to learn at least the basic safety skills (is key). We try to give every child an opportunity to learn to swim, whether it be through our general swimming lesson program or our Teach Them to Swim program,” she said.

There are six crucial skills an individual can learn during a potentially dangerous water situation.

1. Learning to submerge and go underwater without getting water in their nose.

2. The Swim, float, swim sequence and learning to float on their backs.

3. Reach and throw, don’t go. Two of the children who drowned in 2012 went in after the others, so Lechnir’s advice was to find another way to help other than jumping in — whether it’s a stick or an article of clothing.

4. Jump, push, turn, grab. If an individual falls in the water, he or she should turn back to where they came from and grab on to safety.

5. Learning to use life jackets in the water.

6. Treading water.

Clare Wing is an instructional coach at Rogers who is currently teaching fourth grade, and she relishes the opportunity to get kids out of the classroom and let them have fun in the water while also teaching an important lesson.

“They’re practicing the same skills, and they’re getting that opportunity to kind of use them later in that playtime, so I do think it’s just a great time for them to practice their varying level of swim skills,” she said.

In addition to SAW and Teach Them to Swim, the Y and the school district also partner on Josh the Otter, a dry land water safety program for kindergarteners.

“Teach Them to Swim goes much more in-depth where it actually teaches them to swim. We don’t have that timeframe with this, but this gives them enough basic knowledge of what to do in an emergency,” Lechnir said.

And for Wing, who is bringing kids back for the fourth or fifth time in her career already, it’s always one of the highlights of the year.

“It’s something the kids look forward to (and) something the teachers look forward to,” she said. “And it’s at the end of the year, so it’s kind of a fun time of year.”

May is National Water Safety Month. To learn more, visit https://nwsm.phta.org/.

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Contact Robert Maharry at (641) 753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.

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