Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Foss.
Jon, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
When my mother was seventeen, she took her two younger brothers for a picnic at the lake near their farm. In the time it took her to set up the picnic, her youngest brother who was nine drowned. She never heard a cry for help and her other brother didn’t either. What transpired that day changed our entire family. My mother was committed to making sure we could swim and I fell in love with it. I swam competitively and then decided to start a swim school so that young children would learn to swim properly. I’ve also become a champion of teaching everyone that Drowning is Silent as I don’t want one more child to drown. We even designed and created an 8-minute drowning awareness video “A Silent Event” which won a regional Emmy in 2014.
Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest challenge is helping parents understand the importance of teaching their children to learn to swim at a young age. The window of teaching a child to properly swim begins to close at age 6. By the time they are 11, the window is completely closed in teaching a child to swim well. People assume that because their child can swim a length or two in the pool that the child is a strong swimmer. The measurement of a strong swimmer is the ability to swim 300 yards without stopping. In 1991, the Navy estimated that only 6% of Americans could swim that far. Swimming is a life skill that every person should have.
The second biggest challenge is that it’s easy to teach a child to drown by giving them a false sense of security through jumping and catching and the use of floaties. The child then has what we call the “sandbox” mentality and believes he or she can jump into or play in the water without the parent to catch or the floaties to support and that there will be no consequence.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Foss Swim School – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Foss Swim Schools provides the world’s best swimming program for every child. We make swimming safe, fun and engaging in state of the art pools. We believe that our techniques will teach 100% of children to swim – no matter what their level. At Foss, it’s Swimmers Guaranteed®.
We teach 225 skills and have a perfect safety record. Our program is kid-centric using play and positive reinforcement to hook children on success and make them want to swim. Our baby program teaches with a gentle approach not using fear and trauma to teach back floating skills.
Our curriculum laid the foundation for two students to become the fastest women in American history in two separate strokes, backstroke and breast stroke. One went on to become an Olympic gold medalist.
Another reason we’re unique is that we hire only adults and pay sustainable wages. Each instructor gets 50 hours of paid training before they are qualified to teach in our pools. We have never had a 17-year-old or younger instructor in the history of our school because we don’t believe minors should be instructing minors when there is a possibility of drowning.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.fossswimschool.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fossswimschool/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fossswimschool/
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