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Read the ISR Contract Very Carefully
Background on ISR Lawsuit
Why did ISR Sue Former Instructors?
What the Courts Have Said About ISR
ISR's Threats and Lies
What Happened to Former ISR Instructors

Books and Websites About Teaching Infants to Swim

Final Order

What do ISR instructors and parents have to say about this:
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What Happened to the Former ISR Instructors:

Heumann and Shidler left ISR in January, 2000.  In April 2000, Heumann and Shidler put up the Infant Aquatics website and were served with the lawsuit. During that year, Penny Wheeler MI (FL), Bev Steinfink, RN, MI (TX) and Nadyne Siegel-Brown (GA) also left ISR in protest of the treatment of the above named defendants. They, along with Shidler and Heumann, have continued to teach swimming and train instructors for the benefit of their respective communities.  

The loss of these instructors by ISR represents some 65 years of infant swim teaching experience.  

These instructors joined the National Swim Schools Association (now the USSSA) and attended its infant swim workshops. They were stunned to discover other swim teachers with the same level of expertise and experience, who had no previous association with ISR.  

They organized their own conferences which were attended by former ISR instructors as well as non-ISR instructors. Attendees presented different ways of doing the same thing: teaching infants to swim. (Conference Link) At the second conference, guest speakers were invited: an expert who works with swim coaches around the US, a toddler instructor from New York, and a former Olympian.  

The instructors began improving and adding to their programs. Ann Shidler visited some twenty swim schools around the country to come up with a new approach for her new swim school. The instructors created an instructor training manual; sourcing everything, making sure that their program was not only physiologically correct but that it contained a bibliography where new instructors could get the original information themselves. They are continually searching out innovative teaching and programming ideas in an effort to improve their individual schools.


Questions:

1) Is the public interest served by not allowing former ISR instructors to teach babies to swim because Harvey Barnett is not making money?

2) Should these experienced, qualified instructors, who have already paid Barnett tens of thousands of dollars and separated from ISR because of a restrictive environment, be allowed to continue to pursue their profession and prevent drowning by teaching children and training others in the same life saving skills?