
About Us
About Sheryl Rothe, Nationally Certified ISR Instructor
Sheryl has worked with children in various settings for over 17 years and is a mother of 4 children herself. She grew up in Colorado on a family farm and attended Colorado State University, achieving a degree in Microbiology and a Masters Degree in Adult Education.
Sheryl’s own children are accomplished swimmers and hold multiple state champion titles from 8 and under to Arizona High State Champions while obtaining Sectional cuts, swimming at the college level, and becoming USA Swim Coaches.
Additionally, many of her students are also on USA swim teams and have achieved USA state swimming and regional champion titles.
All of her children’s successes are owed to the first swim program they participated in: ISR.
Sheryl’s Program“This is not your average high school swimmer or lifeguard teaching lessons – this is an aquatic survival specialist teaching your child to be safe in the water! Once your child has learned to respect and save themselves in the water, they have the confidence to have fun in and around it, and can move on to stroke and eventually a competitive swim team.”
- Sheryl teaches infants and children how to save themselves in the event they make it to the water unsupervised. Even children as young as 6 months can use this technique should they fall in the water.
- Babies 6 to 12 months of age learn to hold their breath underwater, turn onto their backs, and float unassisted.
- Children at one year and older who are walking are taught to expand this into a swim-float-swim sequence; learning how to hold their breath, swim with their heads down, roll onto their backs to float, rest, breathe, and roll back over to continue swimming until they reach the side of the pool.
- Children learn how to master ISR Self-Rescue® skills, first in a bathing suit, then fully clothed, because most water accidents happen when children aren’t dressed for the water.
ISR lessons focus on safe, one-on-one training by ISR certified instructors who customize the program to the abilities of each student. ISR is the leading behavioral-based approach to swimming lessons, using techniques that are developmentally appropriate for your child.
Watching your children is not enough to protect them from every hazardous water situation. Teaching children survival swimming skills provides an extra layer of protection. Learning to roll onto their backs and float unassisted is crucial for survival.
There are over 800 documented cases of students saving themselves using their ISR Self-Rescue skills. ISR has a worldwide network of certified instructors and has delivered more than 8 million safe and effective lessons.
Methodology
“There are a few reasons that ISR Lessons are so short and frequent.”LEARNING EFFICIENCY
- A baby learns a motor skill by frequent, short duration practice. For example, when introducing tummy time to an infant, we don’t place him on his belly and set a timer for 30 minutes. We don’t cheer for the initial two minutes he has his head up, and then – for the sake of the clock – force him to lie struggling for the remaining 28 minutes. While it’s perfectly ok to allow a baby to work, it does nothing to keep him there when he’s too fatigued. It is a more effective approach to give him the opportunity to practice for a short amount of time, a few times throughout the day. Not only does this promote muscle strengthening and create the basis for future motor skills, like rolling over, but it also allows him to be successful – “If I lift my head up, I get to see that cool, bright toy that mommy’s holding up there.” Short, frequent practice is the way a child learns every motor skill – crawling, walking, etc. When initially learning to float or swim, it is more efficient to practice a few successful attempts than to stay in the water longer for the sake of time, and risk practicing with cold, fatigued muscles.
- When looking at weekly 30+ minute lessons, the week off in between each lesson does not allow a child to process what he has learned and apply it quickly enough to retain it as “muscle memory.” Think of it this way. If you have a test coming up a week from today, and you cram one study session in today, do you expect to remember everything you studied after a week? For this reason, it is recommended that you study a little each day and build upon what you studied the previous day. ISR’s daily lessons allow a child to take what they learned 24 hours prior, practice it soon after, and build on it day after day.
PREDICTABILITY
- Children thrive on routine. Knowing that they will go to swim lessons every day, for the same amount of time, with the same instructor creates a consistent learning environment. As they go through lessons, they know what is expected of them, and eventually begin to see that it’s just part of their day, like brushing their teeth. Yes, sometimes they don’t want to, but there’s no surprise that they have to. They learn to trust their instructor to safely guide them through their learning process.
PRACTICE CONDITIONS
- Another reason for stopping the clock after 10 minutes lies in the baby’s ability to regulate his body temperature. Although the pool is heated, it is still lower than the child’s body temperature. By nature, exercise uses energy, which causes body heat loss. While this is easy to overlook in the water because we don’t see sweat as an indicator, it is an important aspect to consider. Research shows that muscle force production decreases at lower temperatures, which makes it more difficult to move a constant force relative to the muscle’s capacity. (Journal of Experimental Biology
(https://jeb.biologists.org/content/220/11/2017).
- Not only is it inefficient to practice a skill with fatigued muscles, the water is not an environment that anyone should be remaining in while fatigued.
BREATH CONTROL
- A child learning to swim is learning how to control his breath – breathing when above the surface, and holding his breath when submerged. Occasionally, a child can swallow air when learning to hold his breath, which combined with expressing his emotions by crying in the pool, can cause a buildup of air in the abdomen. ISR instructors are trained to monitor air buildup and allow a child to expel this air so that breath control is not compromised. The 10 minute lesson is another way to ensure this.
- Finding time to schedule swim lessons while juggling everyday life is no small task, but if you look at it in terms of maximizing your time, ISR lessons are a clear win. We hear from many parents as the last week of their child’s lessons approach, “We are going to miss coming everyday. What are we going to do with our mornings now?”
- Routine is a good thing when it means your child is in the routine of knowing how to save his own life!”