Let me preface this properly. I don't mind swimming. It could be the way the water glistens off of my majestic body, or the fact that I can will the gross waters of a YMCA pool clean around me. I don't even mind working with participants in the water. I still hang up my "Great Pool Spirit Award" from my first year as a camp counselor on my wall with pride. I've made some really fun memories in pools, when there's really very little schoolwork to be done, and people can just chillax for a cool minute.
But I hate swimming. If there has been one complaint that I've run into more often than not, from program to program to program... If there's one place where staff delinquency is the highest among all, it's at the pool. In my experience, while everyone has a truly chilling 'poop story', if you really want to turn off the lights, and hold the flashlight under your face, and accompany the visage with a creepy voice, you'd better be talking about the pool.
Overwhelmed, under staffed:
I mean, the pool is stressful. Not only do you have to march your crew through the changing rooms, trying to figure out how the male staff is going to take care of the onslaught of oncoming students, but then you have to get yourself changed, meaning that you have to trust that someone else has your pupil's attention while you try to rush through changing into your just-a-bit-too-tight swimwear, you have to carefully avoid touching ANYTHING, since it happens to be a universal rule that every pool locker room is the most utterly disgusting, awful place known to mankind... And then you have to get into the water yourself, with the iconic slow-wade as your sensitive bits come into contact with ice cold water. Meanwhile, someone is reliably slacking off, and you have to dodge between vanillas.
Why it's the epitome: Everything is worse at the pool. Everything. The bathrooms are grosser, and the bathrooming is more abundant. If someone poops in the hall? Gross. If someone poops in the pool? They literally have to evacuate the pool, drawing attention to yourself and your charge. Put even a small bit of effort in your appearance for the day, and by the end of the pool, you have walk-of-shame hair, and a chlorine smell.
You don't like it? Too bad:
And honestly, all this stuff is peachy in my book. But then you run into a student who doesn't want to get into the water, and someone that is heading your group is demanding that they get put into it. That's where the activity begins to truly lose the fun for me. I mean, it's one thing to sacrifice a year off my life, as the bitter cold and the germs eat away at my soul, so that someone I'm working with has a truly fun time doing something which would be prohibitively difficult without the protection of a structured programming institute guiding us into the waters. It's an entirely different thing when I have the spend the better part of half an hour trying to convince them to change into their swimwear so that they can get into the water, while my superiors get upset at me for not simply ripping their clothes off and changing them manually. Not that I have specific resource material for this gripe or anything.
Why it's the epitome: The effort to get into the pool is far greater than other efforts done to secure an activity. Don't want to do a T.E.A.C.C.H. Task? Cool, throw it on the floor. Took me ten seconds to get ready, and takes me twenty seconds to pick up. Don't want to go to the pool? Getting into the transportation = struggle. Getting into the building = struggle. Getting changed = struggle. Getting into the water = struggle. Getting OUT of the water = struggle. All the meanwhile that old lady is gaping and then going off to tell the people in front that you're making a person with special needs scream.
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That's where things feel frustrating, but it's also where some more subtle complaints begin to arise. And that's what brings me to the original topic of the article. I don't like the situation of having to deal with a student that doesn't get into the water. That's immediate. It's a sort of tangible dislike. The less tangible dislike comes out of something closer to pride. "Well," I ask, (to no one in particular,) "why are we trying so hard to get a student that doesn't want to swim into the pool?"
The buzzwords:
Inevitably, someone has an answer. Something along the lines of, "because it's therapeutic for x to go swimming. Study Y and Z blah blah blah." That person is my boss, and the one who is adamant about us going into the water, rain or shine. If you want to see a clear line of differentiation between those people who are considered 'administrative', and those people who are considered 'direct workers', look no further than a swimming pool. You see, because while this boss person may be able to quote IEPs, case studies, and familial goals, you can never find that person swimming come the -10 degree days, or sometimes at all, ever. Whatever anecdote you may have about a student not enjoying the pool is considered irrelevant and unacceptable because this boss person, who maybe hasn't ever even been to the pool, and certainly is not regularly in the changing rooms or in the water with the participants.
Why it's the epitome: Okay, so swimming isn't the end-all-be-all of buzzwords (that would be "Gluten Free Diet"). But it's one of the few bandwagons that we have to consciously engage with. It's specifically frustrating, though, to us because of how clearly invested in the buzzword some people are. Yes, for some individuals swimming is really quite therapeutic. I don't have the case studies to quote on it, but I've certainly seen how some people react to the water with joy and wonder and release. But some people don't. Just like peer inclusion, and art/music therapy, and any other thing that you could get some people to have great results from, swimming works well with some of the people, some of the time. They don't call it 'special needs' because everyone in the program reacts to the programming the same way, invariably. Hell, no two people, typically functioning or functioning like a badass or whatever, feel the same way about anything all the time.
Taxation without representation:
The boss person invariably is too important or busy to be able to do that little task. But considering how important it is to the students, and how much the families demanded that it be included into their children's life, it would look absolutely horrible if the program failed to include it. It stops being another part of the schedule which we can work around flexibly, and starts being an administrative buzzword that we have to live out while they get to sell it with gold leaf and cursive handwriting.
And worse, since it's uncomfortable, and since these administrative types don't have to do it themselves, the pool stops just being a frustrating task during the day, and starts becoming a reminder that we are not 'the people in charge', only 'the help'. The way it gets talked about breeds venom between a group of people who don't have to do the task, who get to drive Lexus' and attend organizational galas as guests of honor, and the supposedly 'most important members of the organization', who have to do the task, lest they want to see the other end of an unemployment line.
Why it's the epitome: Swimming is a task which you don't want to do, and your boss won't do, and yet they won't listen to your complaints either. Any other task, and an administrator could possibly facilitate, but somehow when it comes down to swimming, they're never around. That's why I think that swimming shows the space between administrator and staff:
It becomes clear-cut. Who is on "our team", and who is part of "the administration"? If you want one way to pick out who is inclusive, and who is exclusive, pick out the people that don't ever have swimming duties because they don't have to. The teachers that we accept as "part of our team" groan and complain about being made to swim as hard as we do. Meanwhile, the teachers that are part of "the administration" send us out and don't ask questions. Hell, positions which may be considered administrative might find themselves on "our team" if they dive into the pool with us from time-to-time.
When we get together in days, weeks, or months following, we start to add up our paychecks and compare them to the bills due, we complain about it with our teams, and we start to wonder whether or not this play against our pride is really worth it anymore, or if it is the final straw to break the infamous camel's back. And sometimes we get a pat on the back, and we look forward to more pleasant things.
But sometimes... sometimes that's when the newly waxed Lexus of our favorite administrator pulls up, and with silent nods and hand gestures we begin plans of mutiny. Sweet, sweet mutiny.
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So, to any administrators watching: It doesn't have to be this way. Listen to your staff. Take a dive in yourself. Hell, complain about the water and deal with a Code Brown with us, and you're set. But when you use your authority to put that barrier between yourself and those tasks you'd rather not be doing... We remember. :)
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