Safe Swimming for All, a program created by Gianna Petrella, is recruiting Ohio University students to help teach children with disabilities how to swim. The program is held at the Beacon School in increments of six weeks where trainers and volunteers work together to create a specialized plan for each student in order to help them achieve certain goals.
Each child is followed by one instructor as well as a primary volunteer and a second volunteer in order to make sure each child gets the specialized attention they need.
Jordanne Krajewski, a junior studying child and family studies, said she taught swim lessons during high school and has always understood the importance of swim safety. She said that unlike Safe Swimming, the ratio of teachers to students where she used to work was 4-to-1, making it a lot harder for students to get specialized attention.
“When I heard about this, I was like, ‘That’s really cool,’ because I think that every student, even somebody that would learn normally, would need that extra attention,” she said.
Krajewski said her favorite part of working for the group was being able to see the students grow, learn and adapt while also picking up certain skills. She said this has helped her give herself a reason as to helping the children and she feels rewarded by the student’s successes.
Krajewski also said she really enjoys working with Safe Swimming and hopes to stick with it for a while.
“Especially with Safe Swim, it’s something that’s starting small and it’s growing and it’s cool to see it take flight,” she said. “So, being a part of that is really cool and I’m definitely wanting to stick with it for a while and see how it goes.”
Hailey Courts, a junior studying speech pathology and communication sciences and disorders, said she became friends with the starter of the group Gianna Petrella and helped her interview girls in order to start Safe Swimming for All in Athens. She said she was on the swim and dive team as well as a lifeguard all through high school and knew she also wanted to help kids with disabilities so the program helped her merge these two aspects of her life together.
“I job shadowed in a couple of schools, and the schools I job shadowed at had special access pools,” she said. “I got to watch a couple of their lessons and it was so cool to see kids who can’t even walk get in the pool and then become full-blown swimmers.”
Courts said what she really enjoyed about the job was that there was a huge bond between everyone on the executive team, which made them less than coworkers and more like friends. This made it easier for them to communicate about their lesson plans for certain kids.
She said her favorite part of the job was seeing kids go beyond the goals that the instructors had given them and surprise everyone.
“My favorite part of it is probably seeing kids that we thought weren’t going to be able to hit their goals and then they do in two weeks and we have to come up with even harder goals for them,” she said. “That is such a step back to think, ‘Oh my gosh. This is actually working. We’re making a difference.’”
Delaney Roth, a freshman studying early childhood education, said she got involved with Safe Swimming because a friend’s mother saw it on Facebook and thought she might be interested. Roth said when at home she works for a program which teaches kids how to play different sports. She said the only differences between the two programs was that the one she works for at home is not necessarily geared towards children with disabilities and also does not focus on aquatics.
Avery Suhay, a freshman studying child and family studies, said she also found the program through Facebook and was able to apply and start volunteering after going through an interview.
She said she wanted to try out the program because in high school she had developed a connection with a child with autism and wanted to work with other kids and help them too.
“I worked one-on-one with him a lot, and throughout the experience I knew I had a passion for working with children with disabilities,” she said. “I thought this was a really unique way to do that, especially in a community that doesn’t have that many opportunities.”
Suhay said she really enjoyed being able to see students enjoy their time at the pool and seeing them grow. She said that although everyone puts in hard work, Gianna Petrella, the leader of the program, deserves the most credit.
“This is a really amazing program and Gianna has put a lot of work in and she definitely deserves all the credit,” she said.
Lindsey Ward, a Safe Swimming for All parent, said her daughter Gabby had an amazing experience when working with all the coaches in the pool.
She said this was the first pastime that Gabby truly enjoyed because of the way the coaches were able to incorporate elements of play like mermaids and toys into the lessons.
“This was the first activity that Gabby has really enthusiastically joined in on,” she said. “She’s tried a number of different kinds of outside of school activities. This is one that she consistently looked forward to, was really excited to try and would run away from me gleefully for her instructors.”
Ward said with Gabby having autism, sensory issues can arise and be overwhelming so starting new activities can sometimes be difficult, but with Safe Swimming she was able to become more comfortable.
“This has been such an incredible experience, not just for Gabby but for our family to see her have so much joy from doing this and to have the lasting impact of being excited to go back in the pool and to want to keep swimming,” she said. “That’s an impact that will last a lifetime for Gabby.”
