By Emily Gray “Sharky”

Before becoming a NESS SEA AmeriCorps member, I spent the summer as an Educator at NESS. During this experience, I was given the opportunity to work with a variety of different age groups, my favorite being the 4-5 year olds, the Little Aquanauts. One week, our program had a student who was extremely excited to go swimming, but suddenly became scared when it came time to go. She had gone swimming at the beach before, which meant she walked into the water instead of jumping off a dock as we were planning to do that day. With this fear in her mind, she sat on the dock and refused to go in the water.

As the week went on she gradually became more comfortable on the water, including learning how to kayak. But, swimming off the dock was of no interest to her. With some encouragement from her educators and classmates, she became willing to climb the ladder into the water and float on a boogie-board. She would let go of the boogie-board with an educator holding her during her swim.

Two weeks later, she came back for another week and picked up right where she left off. By the end of that first day back, she had gotten the hang of swimming on her own with an educator close by. Then by the end of this second week, she was the FIRST student to jump from the dock into the water!

Words can’t express how excited and proud I have been of this student for overcoming her fear of the water! It’s one thing to be able to touch the bottom of a pool or stand in the ocean, but to actually swim in open water with no sight or touch of the bottom can be frightening sometimes. She believed in herself and pushed herself to not only grow personally, but to be the one encouraging others to do the same.