Years ago my son went to daycare preschool that had a shallow (2') pool and offered swimming lessons. Since there are so many backyard pools here, I signed him up. Everything sounded great: very low child: teacher ratio, experienced teachers, yada, yada. On the last day of the first session, they invited parents to watch. Since it WAS primarily daycare, only a few of the parents were actually present; I was one of those few. The teacher worked with each child one by one while the others stayed at the edge of the pool. I don;t recall if they were sitting on the side or holding onto it, but in the water. The teacher HAD IS BACK TO THE KIDS while he was working with the one. Needless to say, one of the kids let go, or got in and was over his head. No noise, but plenty of flailing as he went under water and back up and under again and again. Took me about two steps to get to the edge of the pool, another step into the pool, and to grab him and raise him out of the water, coughing. The teacher STILL did not know what had happened! Not until I was back in my seat, dripping wet did he realize that one of his students had nearly drowned. As soon as the lesson was over (no way was I leaving that pool while there were still kids in it), I stormed into the office and demanded that the instructor be fired (they couldn't as he did not work directly for them, but the company with whom they contracted did terminate him). I was absolutely outraged that they would have hired such an incompetant person to begin with.
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