After her 3-year-old nearly drowned years ago, Taylor Alexander embarked on a mission to teach water safety to every child in southeast Louisiana.
It happened in an instant. Alexander was putting sunblock on another one of her children by the pool. Her son, Ian, ventured toward the water, mistakenly thinking he had his floatie on. But when he went into the pool, he sank straight into the bottom.
“When I saw how quickly something could have happened had I not been right there, I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m not waiting,’” Alexander says. “So, two weeks later I signed him up with this lady that teaches the same method that we teach now.”
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Alexander is referring to the methods utilized by her instructors at Tadpole Academy Swim School, which she launched in 2013. The school takes a more aggressive, fast-paced approach to swim safety, encouraging parents to enroll their children in lessons at a much younger age. It also discourages relying on floatation devices in classes. Alexander finds that this approach produces real results in even her youngest students.
“It’s amazing to see how many 2- and 3-year-old children can swim across the pool,” Alexander says.
“Our number one priority is to make sure no more children drown.”
—Taylor Alexander, owner of Tadpole Academy Swim School
The academy’s students start on an eight-day lesson plan. Instructors have children place their faces into the water on day one. On day seven, children are told to come to class fully dressed, so they can learn to swim even if they accidentally fall into a pool with clothes on. And instructors are not allowed to skip over any safety explanation, no matter how minuscule it may seem.
“Our number one priority is to make sure no more children drown,” Alexander says. “We treat every family as if they’re the next one who could have an accident.”
The academy meets an urgent need in Louisiana. Louisiana ranks third in the nation among states with the highest drowning rates, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2019. Worse still, the state’s child drownings rose 60% in 2020, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. In those cases, 96% of the children who drowned did not know how to swim.
Alexander started teaching her methods nearly a decade ago at the pool at the Prairieville church she attends. The business quickly took off, and after the floods in 2016, a friend asked if Alexander could send a swimming instructor to her home in Zachary. When social media followers caught word she was offering home-based swimming instruction, requests across southeast Louisiana rolled in quicker than she could book them.
Fast forward to 2022, and Tadpole Academy Swim School travels to residential pools across the region. The business is insured and requires that each homeowner also be insured.
Today, it employs 15 lead instructors and more than 20 different assistants. All lead instructors complete rigorous training to learn the academy’s protocols and become Red Cross Water Safety Instructors, the highest swim certification.
“I certify them in (the Water Safety Instruction course) before they’re able to teach. They work for me for a year, and they’re invited to take the course through the Red Cross,” she says “And then they sit for two sessions. If we feel like they’re capable at that point, then they can go out and lead.”
As an added layer of security, the academy also encourages the caregivers to stay at the lesson with their children.
“We don’t want any caregiver showing up to practice, caught off guard by our aggressive method,” Alexander says. “We need those parents to cheer their kids on and give them high fives. We need them to encourage their kids to take every single turn.”
Now in her tenth year, Alexander says she has no plans of slowing down.
“Since starting Tadpole Academy, I began to realize that there were so many children in rural areas that weren’t going to get swim lessons if we didn’t go there. It’s no surprise in Louisiana, we’re at the top of the chart for drownings for children per capita,” Alexander says. “And every year, we have a minority with a higher drowning rate.”
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In the U.S., 64% of Black children don’t know how to swim, according to the USA Swimming Foundation, and the CDC’s most recent data reports that Black youth drown in swimming pools at 5.5 times the rate of white children. Alexander says she thinks back to the history of segregation in swimming pools, when for years Black people weren’t even allowed to take part in swim lessons.
“As a result, caregivers constantly told these children to stay away from the water. It’s important we teach every child that water is not scary,” she says. “It’s a healthy outdoor activity for all to enjoy.”
Registration for swim lessons opened in January but there are still available spots. Visit TadpoleAcademy.com for more information.