“The ATT4 course got me thinking about the different learning styles of people on my courses.”
Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) North Island Aquatic Education and Water Safety Manager, Karen Dalldorf loves her job. Based in Hawke’s Bay, she knows the need for water safety education has never been higher. Drowning is one of the highest causes of accidental death in New Zealand. With the lives of the millions of people who visit our beaches, and the further 630,000 people who go fishing every year, at risk, Karen is on a mission to train our teachers and swim instructors in water safety.
She chose our New Zealand Certificate in Adult & Tertiary Teaching Level 4 (ATT4) course to give her the skills to make sure the instructors delivering the SNZ Water Skills for Life programme are as engaged and motivated as she is. Karen gets a huge buzz when she sees children who would not venture into deep water at the start of the programme, confident to jump or dive in at the deep end and swim to the shallows within a few weeks.
Alongside her work developing the next generation of swimming instructors, she also teaches the Bay’s school teachers how to deliver the WSFL program in their own school pools and classrooms. “The ATT4 course got me thinking about the different learning styles of people on my courses.”
Karen used some strategies modelled by her ATT4 facilitator Sara. “It has been great, especially for the kinaesthetic learners. I made a set of cards showing the progressions of teaching someone to swim. I jumbled them up and got the learners to correctly order them. This worked even better when I added a visual to each card.” Learner feedback has been really positive, with many rating this activity as their favourite part of the day.
Karen has taken what she learned and is applying it in her quest for every New Zealander to understand the risks associated with being in and around water.