Swim Curriculum for Grade 3
A frigid winter morning may seem like the least popular time to go for a swim, but not for Somerville third grade students. At the Ginny Smithers Pool inside John F. Kennedy School, youngsters are eager to dive (or, at least, cautiously wade) into the district’s swim program, many for the first time in their lives.
The program has experienced some ups and downs in recent years, but with a new director steering the ship, instructional swim lessons are making a big splash as every K–8 school participates in the seven-week 3rd grade swim series.
Adopting swimming as his first major initiative, Blair Williams - the district’s new Supervisor of Health and Physical Education - has already made a noticeable difference. Williams estimates that about a quarter of the program’s third graders do not know how to swim, a basic life skill that many children never learn. Through this 7-week program, over 300 kids from all district schools are introduced to the pool - which is conveniently located indoors at the Kennedy.
“There were so many missing parts,” Williams noted upon his arrival. The lack of a dedicated swim instruction team or pool management, he says, as well as inconsistent programmatic structure nearly caused swim instruction to be removed from the district’s standard curriculum. Today, working in strong collaboration with the City’s Recreation staff, Williams has reinvigorated a program where students now learn “essential life saving skills” that will prove beneficial for a lifetime.
The numbers tell a clear story: strong swim programs save lives. In 2022 alone, Massachusetts saw 57 accidental drowning deaths and 86 near-fatal incidents, including nine involving youth under 17. The state’s data also shows that drowning risk is higher for people of color and those born outside the U.S. - communities that make up a meaningful part of Somerville’s vibrant population.
Learned skills include front crawl, front and back float, and treading water in the shallow pool before moving to the more challenging 10 foot depth for freestyle swims and diving from the pool’s edge. Along with instructors, local college students serve as trained lifeguards overseeing each 45-minute session.
For those students who do not reach a level of swim proficiency, the district offers parents a written update and recommendations to further enhance water skills. But so far, the results have been extraordinary. Williams is pleased to report that the year’s first session with Healey School yielded 96% of swimmers passing a proficiency review.