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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?
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