Melon Dash's Page

A teachable moment for swim instructors and lifeguards has arisen from a heroic rescue of a drowning teenager in Puerto Rico by a tourist on the shore.

Jean Pendrich, a former champion swimmer for Scotland, swam through 5 foot waves to reach the boy

and tow him back. She said of the rescue, "“I reassured him everything would be all right but I was exhausted. I was swallowing lots of water and he was in such shock he couldn’t kick his legs."

The magical…

In 1910 or 1912 when Wilbert Longfellow started teaching swimming and began training people to be swimming instructors, he said, "In order to learn to swim, you must overcome your fear."

This truth was lost in the past 100 years. What happens when a truth is lost?

Many people suffer. In this particular case, many people have drowned.

Two people, Paul Lennon and I, realized in the 1980's that the lessons we were trained to teach didn't work for half our…

As we all know, there are far more children's swimming lessons given in this country than adult lessons. This is true even though there are 3 times as many adults in the U.S. as children (U.S. Census, 2010). And about half of adults can't swim (Gallup, 1998).

One might think that the market for adult lessons would be staggering (and it is) and that anyone who wants to expand their swimming instruction business would want to capitalize on it.

However, many swim instructors are…

Today was to be the start of the End of Drowning World Conference for Swimming and SCUBA Instructors in Sarasota, FL.

The website stated exactly what the meeting would contribute to instructors of swimming and SCUBA diving. It was perhaps too powerful for people to believe. Or maybe people think they already know it.

Midway through the marketing campaign, the title of the meeting was changed. I thought,…