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Woman sat at a laptop and wearing a headset in an office.
Woman sat at a laptop and wearing a headset in an office.

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Meet swim teacher Evie

Evie got a job during university and was able to achieve her level 2 as a swim teacher.

1 minute 40 second watch

View transcript

My name is Evie. I'm a swim teacher, a lifeguard, receptionist, and I’m also walking netball trained at York Leisure Centre.

So I moved to uni in 2023, and I swim teached at home, and then my mum and dad were like, you need a job at uni. You need something. So I just looked online and this place were, they were advertising for a swim teacher. So that's how I started out.

I teach anywhere from 4 to 12. Before I joined here, I was level one swim teacher and level one swim coach because I used to coach at my old swimming club. And then when I, I did a year and I went through my level two swim teaching. And you sort of just develop that stroke knowledge. So I already had quite a bit from being a swimmer, but you just develop it even more. You learn the technical terms, you learn the actual, not how you’d teach it, it’s how everyone teaches it.

So there's a lot of technical terms that seven year olds don't understand, so you've got to make all these games and make it so that they understand what's going on. But yeah, it's, it's developing that stroke techniques the biggest part being a swim teacher.

Before I came I was first aid trained, but now I'm a lifeguard, I'm fully first aid trained, we’re defib trained, EpiPen trained, all of it. So that's, it’s sort of reassuring for me even when I'm swim teaching and I'm not actively lifeguarding, that if there's a first aid in my swim lessons, I can deal with it while I'm waiting for a lifeguard to come round.

I don't have a lot of contact hours at uni, thanks to my course. It's a lot of independent learning. So I’m only at uni two days a week. I can pick my shifts when they work for me. And there's always, like, overtime available. There's always, always something going. There's never a week where I'm not here.

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