How to Prepare for the American Red Cross Lifeguard Instructor Trainer or Water Safety Instructor Academy (Part 2)

In this episode, we go into the essentials of preparing for and succeeding at an Instructor Trainer (IT) Academy. Whether you're aiming to become a Lifeguard Instructor Trainer (LGIT) or a Water Safety Instructor Trainer (WSIT), this episode is packed with valuable advice and practical tips to help you excel.

Key Topics Covered:
*Pre-Academy Preparation: Arriving early, getting settled, and familiarizing yourself with the training facility.
*Skill Practice: Importance of polishing your lifeguard and swimming skills before the academy.
*Day One Overview: What to expect, including initial skill assessments and course material.
*Teaching and Evaluation: Tips for practice teaching, using skills charts, and receiving feedback.
*Written Test Preparation: Key areas to focus on, especially the administration section.
*Success Rates and Challenges: Understanding the success rates and common challenges faced by participants.
*Host Facility Considerations: Pros and cons of hosting an academy at your facility versus attending a neighboring one.

Contact David Kotz

• Email: info@nstc.net
• Phone: 908-502-0600

About The Lifesaving Chronicles:
Hey there, lifesaving educators! I'm David Kotz, your host and the founder of the National Safety Training Center. Join me as we embark on a bi-monthly journey, each session packed with approximately 30 minutes of rich content tailored for American Red Cross and American Heart Association educators like you—CPR/First Aid instructors, Lifeguard instructors, EMT instructors, and any current or aspiring lifesaving educating entrepreneurs who are passionate about saving lives. We'll dissect current events, explore teaching strategies, and review lifesaving techniques. But that's not all! We want you to be a part of the conversation. Got a topic or an incident you're itching to discuss? Send it our way, and let's tackle it together on the show. Gear up for an educational ride with The LIFESAVING CHRONICLES.

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Transcript

0:03

Thank you.

David Kotz: 0:05

I'm going to encourage you to arrive the day before your academy starts, get settled in at your hotel. You could be traveling to some far away city, but get settled in your hotel. If you have a chance, visit the training facility; know where you're going. See what facilities they have there. Get the lay of the land. Do they have a microwave for lunch or not? Maybe they have a cafe that you can have lunch at. Just get the lay of that land and get settled in. Get a good night's sleep. You will be exhausted for this course of the week, you will sleep like the dead when you are done. So, definitely visit the facility, get a good night's sleep. You should be good. Lastly, before you obviously start traveling, you should be practicing your skills. First thing that what they're going to do at an LGIT academy is get you in the water and practice and polish your lifeguard skills. If your lifeguard skills are not up to the standard, you have a limited window to polish those skills and get them up to the standard before they say goodbye to you. And will they exit you from an academy if your skills are not to standard Yes, they will.

Anna Unruh: 1:14

Similar with the WSIT academy, you're gonna get in, you're gonna show them your strokes. Ideally, you're gonna be exactly where you need to be. They see that there's a little bit of struggle with a small thing, you still need to correct that. What I did before both of the academies. Both times that I took them, I had people looking at my skills. I pulled in co workers, it's hey, I really need to practice this, I don't solid as I could be on it, I'm gonna speak from experience trying to practice a submerged victim rescue in a five foot pool because you don't have access to a deeper one, it's awkward. Your main thing that you need to focus on is that tube control. So yeah, you're going to sit at the bottom of the pool and pull the strap down until you get used to how to manage that tube with a person in your arm. So you might be sitting or kneeling and practicing the tube management, but that's going to be your big one. Similarly with WSIT, like you're not going to get to practice your dives if you work at a five foot pool. The educators will acknowledge that. Just email them ahead of time and Hey, I don't have access. I know that I need to learn these things. Can you give some like tips for before I get again, like is going to help you out. But yeah, I had people looking at my butterfly because everyone's got their own breaststroke is another common one. Get your swim team coaches. Get your more advanced or more experienced swim instructors. Whoever you've got as a resource, have them look at your skills, whatever those are, and pick them. It is better that you be picked by a peer and get it fixed than to get to the academy and wasted that potential practice time. Now if you're an outdoor only pool, you need to plan ahead. So if you're like in my area, I'm in Nebraska, we only have some of the pools during the summer, if you're a summer only person, plan ahead. Start practicing, and practice as much as you can, and then if there is an indoor in the region, you might be driving an hour, go see if they'll let you practice, because they typically, out where we are in the rural areas, they would love another instructor in the area, and they might be able to lend you a couple of bodies. So, build those relationships.

David Kotz: 3:17

Good advice. Hey, let's talk about day one. So we already talked a little bit about the first thing they're gonna do is practice and polish. Show me your strokes. Show me your lifeguarding skills.

Anna Unruh: 3:26

Day one. They're gonna go over a whole bunch of material that you need to be aware of. So like, how the flow of the academy is gonna go, cause they did just update the lifeguard update. And you're gonna get, start getting lot of information on- for the WSIT side of things, it's a little bit more of the educator's day and then you jump into more of the candidates going through all of their teachings. For the LGIT, I think they jump in a little bit faster now.

David Kotz: 3:54

Think we're down to three days for LGIT.

Anna Unruh: 3:56

Right. You gotta be so prepared. You gotta know if you're going next and be ready to just take over. You want that transition time to be as short as possible, because that means that you get to go home on time. So make sure that you know your run time for your presentations for when you're doing your teachings and your teachbacks and know when you're up next. So that way you minimize that turn by going like, hey, I'm ready to go. I got my stuff prepared.

David Kotz: 4:19

That means you have your manual. You maybe have notes in your manual on what page numbers the students need to be at, whether that's in the instructor manual or the participant manual. You need to understand if as an instructor or LGIT. And you also need to have the equipment. Do you need mannequins? Do you need backboards? Do you need rescue tubes? Have that assembled and ready. The more you do that, the better- everyone will like you. Trust me.

Anna Unruh: 4:45

Because if you go, hey, my lesson plan calls for noodles, and then you have to pivot, make sure that you write that in your lesson plan ahead of time.

David Kotz: 4:52

So particularly, if you're sending out your assignments ahead of time. I always recommend practice teaching before you arrive at the academy if you possibly can. You can do it in your hotel the night before, but it's not as valuable. Practice ahead of time. Practice either in the mirror, so you can see yourself, or practice even better to another audience, whether it's your children at home, your colleagues, your spouse, whatever it may be, to get some positive and negative, what you can do differently, but that is invaluable. You're just going on the fly and they give you an assignment. You're like, okay, I can go to page number 35 and wing it, the educators know. We all- everybody knows.

Anna Unruh: 5:35

Also make sure that you check the back of your page. Some people have forgotten to turn a page and missed an entire half of teach. Other times, they were just trying to guess at what came before and it's like, no, you need to know what came before. So there's a particular one that I'm thinking of. I'm sure that Dave knows it, too. I won't say what it is, but like, there's pieces to it and you have to know what came before in order to successfully do the step three or four. And so you need to know that those steps exist. You need to read and follow those before you can fully and correctly implement the last one.

David Kotz: 6:12

Day 3, we are probably wrapping up those practice teachings,makingg any corrections that are necessary. There is a written test and you need to pass the written test. I believe now there are two, A and B. When I did it, it was passed, failed, you know, good luck. I think, I don't know that anybody has actually ever failed that written...

Anna Unruh: 6:28

Yes.

David Kotz: 6:30

So whether it's a baby lifeguarding class, a lifeguard instructor class, or as Anna's saying here at the IT academies, there are people that got put there whether it's their parents or their boss, and they don't want to be there. We know who you are. It's obvious to us. So if you don't want to be there, it's costing someone a lot of money, not just the tuition, but the travel expenses, your time, just be cognizant of that. If you don't want to go to lifeguarding or you don't want to go to Lifeguarding Instructor or the IT academy, find something else to do.

Anna Unruh: 7:00

They didn't travel. Their buy in was way less, but again, don't be that person.

David Kotz: 7:05

There's two theories on if you're the host facility, do you take that IT academy? There's pros and cons, right? So if you're the Aquatic Director at XYZ YMCA and you're hosting an academy, if you are participating in the academy, you will expect constant interruptions because operations at your facility constantly has to, well, the water is going over, the chlorine's this, someone had a problem in the bathroom, there's a code brown! Um, whatever the case may be, you're going to get constantly interrupted. There's a good argument to say, Hey, listen, thank you for letting us host, but can we send our staff to a neighboring academy? I would choose that if I had a choice.

Anna Unruh: 7:49

If that is a possibility, I'm going to throw that out there. If we manage to get a host place in Nebraska, we don't have another shot. The nearest one is like Iowa, which is still like five, six hours. So it's kind of that trade off. But yeah, I know coastal areas, some of the more populous areas like Texas, you have some different sites that you can go to, um, that still might be like a five, six hour drive, but they occur more regularly. So I know some of us in the plains were kind of parched for another place. In that case, if you're a host facility, so that you can have it where you can get to it easily or other places, get that backup person in line. You are off duty and let them know that I am off duty. My favorite thing is during the academy is just seeing all the pool managers hit their phones and have to call and coach people through stuff because they are off duty and they told them,"I'm in class. I will reply when I can reply. It doesn't matter how urgent it is unless somebody is in the hospital, I'm not answering."

David Kotz: 8:45

Yeah, but this is aquatics and we all know how that works. So, um... it's just a good process to evaluate. Are you going to go to your academy, your facility, or try and go to a neighboring one? You pick, understand what it is. Hey, let's talk about the kind of unfortunate things. You're at an academy, something goes wrong and you're asked to leave. Let's talk about what the success rate of the academies are. Now we can talk about what happens if you do get asked to leave. When the academies were first rolled out 15, 20 years ago, the success rate was close to 50%. That's not so good. We're definitely up to, what was it? Close to closer to 80 or a guarantee that you're going to pass. They are very challenging and dynamic courses. You need to exert maximum effort and still it is a very challenging course. So sometimes people don't pass. And sometimes they'll try a second time. I've seen more than once in an academy.

Anna Unruh: 9:44

Yeah, I've seen people, and usually it's, you're either gonna get a hunch pretty much day one on that skill thing, they're gonna let you know,"Hey, these skills have to be fixed", so you're gonna be given a heads up, and there have been people that took that, and then stayed after, and other people at the academy typically are willing to buy in and help you practice. So even though the educators may not be available, as long as there's pool space available, I've, definitely seen people go in and practice strokes for the WSIT, or they'll do an example practice teach to get feedback because they haven't taught that level before. And then on the LGIT side, there are certain rescues and it varies on the person on which rescues are their problem, but going through and getting a buddy and practicing. If you're struggling or they've told you, because sometimes it's the well, that's the way I was taught. You can't help it if you were taught and coached incorrectly. And they know that as you come into the academy.

David Kotz: 10:35

So I'll tell you just from personal experience, it happened to me. When I was at the academy for the first time. My deep water submerged rescue skills were not to the standard. What was not to the standard? When I did my feet first surface dive, your legs have to be together and your toes pointed. Do they get to that level of detail? Yes, they do. So I stayed after class for two out of the four days, it was four days then, and I practiced. And I had to practice and polish myself up so that I was at the standard and now when I do this rescue, my toes are pointed, my legs are together, and I appear to be 100%. Remember, now that the LGIT is three days, there's less time for that. So again, it puts more emphasis on being prepared ahead of time. So now you all know, you must have your legs together. You must do a feet first surface dive. Doesn't matter that, Oh, you know, we trained to the, you know, the standard, but test the objective. You must do a feet first surface dive.

Anna Unruh: 11:46

So again, as long as you're willing to come in and do the work, most people do correct by the end. So that's the first one is coming in with your skills and just taking their feedback. There's always going to be like, some little thing that they give you. And you can always ask like to what level that is. So is this the icing on the cake level? I like coaching to icing on the cake level where it looks almost video level. That's not, that's beyond the standard. I will coach you that way. But if I'm evaluating, it's going to be like where we need to be for lifeguard instructors when I'm teaching. You're going to be at the standard.

David Kotz: 12:19

So, Anna mentioned something interesting, like you have to be to the video standard. When you go to these IT academies, you may see people that you recognize from the videos. Many of the educators are in the lifeguard videos. I recognize many of them. I had a very warm feeling about it cause I've worked with these people in the past and I have a huge degree of respect for them. So the fact that they were in the videos is enormously fun and you'll get to meet them. And it's kind of cool.

Anna Unruh: 12:46

Again, that's the first way that you would fail out is like you're not able to get your skills to where you need to be. The other one is not doing well on your critical eye. That's also curriculum awareness. There's a lot of little pieces when you're doing your practice teaching and your teach backs. So, let's go over like how the practice teaching evaluations set up so that way I can frame this a little better. Through the course, because you're going to mimic an instructor course, you're going to have your instructor candidates. Those will be the people taking your imaginary course. You're going to be the IT teaching that course. And then of course you have the educator who's watching over everything during that time. So as the instructor candidate, you need to make sure that you're still following everything to detail. Okay, because the educators are watching you as well to make sure you're still aware even at that base level. When you're the instructor trainer candidate, you have to be aware of those levels and what they're teaching and how things should look and be able to give appropriate feedback which is positive corrective feedback, so you're going to give them something that went well, and then something that they can improve on, or a future consideration because every once in a while, somebody just aces their practice teacher, and you're like, I don't have anything to fix, and you're just like, something to consider if they had an odd number kit. There's a lot of different questions you can throw in there, but you have to have that awareness as you go through. But if you're not showing that awareness of curriculum at the instructor level or at the IT level where they're evaluating you, they're going to give you feedback and with current lifeguard instructor outline, you got two shots. That's it. WSIT, you got four, but it depends on how many people are in your group, so you might have three. Um, they may not give you the full four to evaluate each other on the practice teaches, I believe it's three.

David Kotz: 14:37

You need to be successful. You need to be successful the first time. There is no room to have a, substandard teachback. You need to nail these. I'm going to emphasize the one thing that she didn't say, which is skills charts, and assessment tools. I have no idea how you can be successful when you're evaluating someone's skills if you are not holding in your hand, the appropriate skills charts, assessment tools. Must have those. They must be the correct ones for the skills you're doing. Uh, that is simply essential. If you don't have that, I have no idea how you'll be... successful.

Anna Unruh: 15:15

On the WSIT side, you need to be in the chapter of the book that's for the level that the person's in, where it describes what that skill looks like at each level. So You have that resource. You're going to put it in a protector of some sort and make sure that you're looking at what that skill looks like at that level. And if you're looking at a stroke, then you're going to have your stroke assessment sheets.

David Kotz: 15:36

So at the end of every teach back, you'll be given some feedback. Uh, you'll be asked to give yourself feedback on yourself. How do you think that went? Your peers will give you some feedback in the class. And then the educators will provide a summary or maybe some other sage words of advice. And then they'll go on to the next one. At the end of every day, any concerns, the educators should approach you, take you aside, give you some corrective feedback as necessary; things to consider.

Anna Unruh: 16:06

If you are of the anxious persuasion, because we also see those at the academy, feel free to approach the educators once they've talked to everyone that they still need to talk to, because sometimes they're handing out sheets and you got your sheet earlier in the day because you had an earlier teach. So they may not have anything for you because you got it earlier in the day. But if you're still feeling concerned or worried about something to run something by them, catch them at the end of the day and ask them those questions and run things through. Because again, they want to make sure you're showing interest and they're going to be invested in you too. They want to help.

David Kotz: 16:36

Educators aren't given any goals on how many people they should pass. We want a hundred percent of the people to pass. that are qualified. So we're given rigid standards to adhere to but if everyone meets those standards, we want you to succeed. We spent more time than I anticipated on this subject, which fantastic. I think we've covered a wide range of topics on the IT academies and how to make sure you are successful at an IT academy. Uh, we specifically did not cover- how, you know, okay, you're interested in becoming an IT, where do you apply? So just to quickly mention that when you are on the Red Cross Learning Center, there's a tab under the instructor lifestyle which is, you know, becoming an IT, and it will detail that process. There are several requirements you're going to need to meet. You'll need a letter of recommendation, and you'll have to be evaluated and accepted into the program before you can even sign up for an IT academy. So that's, we can actually do a separate chat about that in the future, but that is where you would go when you're interested in becoming an IT.

Anna Unruh: 17:39

I got one more tip before we go. We mentioned that there's a written test and it's the same tip that I give my lifeguard instructors. You need to read your administration section and know that front to back because that's where a lot of questions come from. Not all of them, but you need to know your administration section because that's important to how you run classes. That's part of what the written test evaluates you over because the educators have evaluated you on your skills and your teaching skills, and now it's your knowledge time.

David Kotz: 18:06

So what's a good example of a question you might see from the administration section?

Anna Unruh: 18:09

Uh, ratio. How many people can you teach?

David Kotz: 18:13

How many mannequins do you need? How many backboards do you need? How many rescue tubes do you need? What is the length of the course? I'm remembering these from the 2017 curriculum. I have not seen the educators test. Listen, we both Anna and myself, we wish you success at the IT academy. It's absolutely possible for everyone to succeed if they put forth the effort. I shouldn't say that. It's possible for almost everyone to succeed, if they put forth the effort. We've seen people who don't pass them and by and large, it's either they didn't have the skills, the physical skills. Prepare ahead of time, bring the right resources with you and enjoy the academies. We hope to see you out in the field teaching lifeguarding and lifeguard instructor classes and WSI class. In fact, here at the National Safety Training Center, we'd like employ you. So one of the things you can do is become part our cadre of instructors. We have classes around the country and we're trying to grow that presence. So one of the things, as you graduate from the academy, consider chatting with us and seeing how we together...

Anna Unruh: 19:16

As an example, I'm in Nebraska, I'm the lone person out in my area, and I get to go travel to Wyoming and teach a WSI course in a few weeks, so there's lots of potential regardless of where you are.

David Kotz: 19:28

Fantastic. Again, thank you all for watching. Remember, we here at the National Safety Training Center want you to succeed and we hope to see you out in the classroom soon.

19:41

Okay.