Become a World-Class Swim Teacher
Our team of more than 250 expert swimming teachers, teaching more than 14,000 babies, toddlers, 3 and 4 years olds to swim each week across Ireland and the UK. But what training is involved?
Believe it or not, swimming is an unregulated activity in Ireland which means that anyone can offer swimming classes without the right qualifications, skills, certification, or experience.
At Turtle Tots, we believe that our customers deserve better. We work closely with the internationally recognised Swimming Teachers Association (STA) and Swim Ireland to ensure that all Turtle Tots teachers are trained to the highest possible standards. In fact, we are proud to say that our teachers are amongst the most highly trained and qualified swimming teachers in the world.
In order to maintain our high standards, we require all our swimming teachers to complete a series of certified qualifications and training programmes before they enter the pool with our customers. We are also a company that dedicated to continual personal growth and development and therefore, we encourage all our teachers to further develop their skills and understanding of early years swimming and development in order to deliver the best experience possible to our customers.
In the first instance, all our teachers must have completed the Swim Ireland Swimming Teachers Award, STA Baby and Preschool Award, and RLSS Rescue qualifications. These are regulated professional qualifications designed to help teachers plan and deliver fun swimming lessons for babies, toddlers and their accompanying adults.
All our teachers must complete a full Garda Vetting check and subsequently hold a clear Vetting certificate for our organisation. A Garda Vetting check is a way for us to check potential teachers criminal record and help us decide whether a person is suitable for working with children and vulnerable adults.
All teachers must also complete and maintain a Swim Ireland Safeguarding Level 1 certificate for children and vulnerable adults.
All teachers employed by Turtle Tots must then complete our rigorous training programme where our industry leading instructors teach them how to teach our award-winning swim programme suitable for children from birth to 5 years. Their training ensures that they can deliver our swimming lessons consistently to the highest standards, but also understand more about babies and young children’s developmental stages, how they communicate in the pre-verbal stage, how their early brains develop, the importance of early attachment and how best to support babies’ learning during this critical early stage of life.
We are always seeking opportunities to learn and develop our skills to be better at what we do and to remain leaders and innovators in our industry. Continual personal development is part of our DNA at Turtle Tots and we encourage every member of our team to seek new opportunities to learn new skills as they progress through their careers with us.
All our teachers hold, or are working towards the STA’s Level 3 baby & Preschool Diploma – expanding their knowledge into child psychology and neuroscience, which has led to changing theories on how young children learn.
Want to Become a World-Class Turtle Tots Swimming Teacher?
We are always on the look out for talented individuals who share our values to join our team. If you want to become a world-class swimming teacher with Turtle Tots, check out our current vacancies page to see the opportunities we have across Ireland.
