(file photo/paNOW Staff)

By Logan Lehmann

Water Safety

‘Swim to Survive’ aims to teach students the basics of safety in deep waters

Feb 15, 2023 | 4:00 PM

Since the beginning of 2023, students from Grades 4-5 registered in the Sask. Rivers School Division have had the opportunity to learn the basics of deep-water safety at Frank J. Dunn pool through Carlton’s ‘Swim to Survive’ program.

Students at Carlton High School run the program where one of the instructors, Geneva Tait said that this program is a great way to teach students while they’re young.

“The goal is to give these kids a foundation on learning to swim,” she explained. “The ‘Swim to Survive’ standard is to roll into deep water, tread for one minute then swim 50 metres. This is a good baseline for if they were ever in a water-related accident, maybe they fell out of a boat. This gives them the abilities to survive.”

As mentioned before, the three main practices of the program are falling, treading, and then swimming in deep waters. If a student cannot swim, the instructors make sure that the student has a life jacket and knows the basics of swimming before taking part in the program.

The program also involves dryland training where the kids play games while learning valuable lessons.

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“Every single day, we give the kids a water-smart message,” she said. “So we have ‘Swim with a Buddy’ and ‘Wear a Life Jacket.’ Then we tell them what that message is and then play a few games that correlate with that message. Like for ‘Wear a Life Jacket’ day, we play dodgeball where they wear a life jacket, and this is a great way of incorporating the dryland water smart messages into the water stuff, so they learn how to wear a life jacket even if it’s not in the water sense.”

Student instructors from Carlton teach elementary students about a dryland game they will play in coordination with ‘Swim to Survive’. (Logan Lehmann/paNOW staff)

The ‘Swim to Survive’ program first started 13 years ago and since the beginning of the year, the program has helped more than 200 SRSD students learn about the basics of water safety and deep water safety.

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logan.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @lloganlehmann