TEAM MEMBER TUESDAY: MEGAN’S PROFILE

Today is our LAST Team Member Tuesday before we take a break to let our new team members get settled. Naturally, we wanted to go out with a bang, so today we are introducing…Megan!! Megan is the glue that holds our team together; without her, our team wouldn’t even exist. We truly saved the best for last with her profile!

Over the years, Megan has grown Let’s All Swim into the thriving Oklahoma Swim Academy we all know and love today. She has done so with absolute, fierce resolve and passion. Starting a business young and on her own was no easy task. In the beginning, she did it all: book keeping, scheduling, facility management, and teaching, all while training with some of the best swim teachers in the nation and developing her own unique and carefully thought-out swimming method for her students. She didn’t sleep much in those beginning years, but it was all worth it!

Megan strives to be gracious and understanding with everyone she interacts with, which is why OSA is more like a family than a business! Megan cares deeply about her employees as well as the families and children that are part of the OSA family. Her top abilities as an instructor are her ability to completely and wholly engage with a child, her ability to read that child’s needs, and her ability to determine the best approach for teaching that child almost instantly. Megan has honed these impressive teaching skills over her many years as an instructor. However, her nurturing traits are just as noteworthy as her teaching skills; her care, love, and pure enjoyment of the job and of the children shine out in her lessons.

While safety is a HUGE part of what we do at OSA, Megan also believes in instilling confidence in children through successful swimming, and she encourages children through successes and setbacks to believe in themselves. Megan is dedicated to continuously developing OSA’s swimming method to reach each child where they are, and to bring children everywhere new, confidence-building and potentially life-saving skills that will stay with them throughout their entire lives. Megan is constantly learning from other swim teachers across the nation in order to ensure our method is the best possible and most up-to-date method. She also works hard to ensure OSA’s unique method is appropriately adapted for every individual student. Megan is constantly sharing her knowledge with our instructors to ensure each instructor has the proper training and empathy to help students be successful with OSA’s special method.

Finally, as a new mom herself, Megan is the ideal advocate for your child in the pool. She understands what it’s like to have a healthy fear for your child’s safety, especially around water. Her little boy, Sam, is quite the little swimmer, and Megan is devoted to providing the same level of safety training and confidence building for each child in OSA’s program as she does for her own son.

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO START A SURVIVAL SWIM BUSINESS?
I started teaching swim lessons and lifeguarding when I was 16 years old and have always loved the water. When I heard about survival swim lessons for infants, I was intrigued. The swim-float-swim method truly worked! Kids were swimming before they were potty trained (this still amazes me). I soon realized I could blend my love for kids and swimming and do this full time! I truly feel blessed to do something I love every day!

WHY DO YOU LOVE BEING A SWIM INSTRUCTOR?
I love that we do something that truly makes a difference! Not just teaching lifesaving skills, but also building confidence in every single child that comes through the door.

HAS BECOMING A MOM IMPACTED THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT SWIM?
I believe it has only made me more passionate about drowning prevention and starting kids in swim lessons early. We started our son in the Parent-Tot program at 4 months old,and we enrolled him in private survival swim lessons at 13 months old, which he still participates in now, at 17 months. Being a mom has also shown me how difficult it can be for a parent to let go of their child and to entrust them to another person to teach them serious and important lessons. I know the crying and the fear can be so difficult to watch in the beginning before the confidence and skill building kicks in, so I have a lot of respect for moms who endure the tough parts in order to make sure their child learns these lifesaving skills. Also, as a mom/swim teacher/swim-school-owner, I am extremely aware of the statistics facing children around water. Drowning is the 2nd leading cause of unintentional death in children under 12, but formal swim lessons reduce the risk of drowning in young people by 88%. As such, I cannot imagine letting my son be around water without having gone through OSA’s entire program and without my close supervision!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOBBY OUTSIDE OF THE POOL?
I enjoy family time, going on walks, and watching movies.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE/BOOK?
Favorite movie would have to be “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “About Time.”

WHAT 3 THINGS WOULD YOU BRING WITH YOU TO A DESERTED ISLAND?
A Fan, Chap-Stick and Dr. Pepper

TELL US A FUNNY STORY ABOUT SOMETHING THAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE POOL.
I had a sweet little girl who had been a little tearful in lessons but was warming up to me, and I asked her if I could sing a song to her while she floated. I asked if she would like me to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or “Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” but her reply made me laugh out loud…She asked if I could sing “Body Like a Back Road” Lol! I didn’t know all the words, so she sang it to me instead…while she floated! Still makes me laugh!