Shell Woods
Enrollment Specialist / Teacher
Woodbury, MN
How long have you worked for FOSS?
1 year and 6 months.
What is your favorite part of working for FOSS?
The people that I get to work with!
What is your favorite skill to teach and why?
Flip to breath is my JAM! Gotta keep those kids safe.
What is your personal favorite water activity?
Floating on my back, it’s SO peaceful!
What is your favorite swim lesson activity to do with kids and why?
Zooming babies is the best, because getting them to focus on their parents is a first step to building a strong and safer swimmer.
Can you recount a student of yours who experienced a major “lightbulb” moment when you were with them? What was it? How did the child react? How did the parent react? What was your reaction?
A big lightbulb moment was with a student named Bella. While she was a very outgoing child, she was very timid in the water. Our time together was spent talking about the water, what we were doing at the moment and singing songs from the movie Annie while we worked on confidence in the backfloat. Her favorite part of the lesson was when she would exit the water and then give me such a huge high five—I would end up “falling back in” the water. This made her laugh and gave her the motivation in the class to try her best so she could give me that last BLAST of energy.
Another time was when a Little 1 was sitting poolside, ready for his Humpty Dumpty. I was doing the rhyme and he clearly wasn’t ready yet so he yelled “WAIT” before I even got to that part. I look at his parents in shock and then we all burst out laughing. He tried it a few other times, but it never had the same effect!
