Author Archives: Anna Magle-Haberek

By Facing Her Fears, Eagle Rock Student Becomes a Certified Lifeguard

When I first spotted Brianna by the swimming pool, I only knew her as “Javonnie’s little sister.” This was back in July of 2016 when I was teaching Javonnie how to face her trepidations about getting across large bodies of water (see Eagle Rock Students Overcome Fears and Take the Plunge).

Brianna eventually joined her older sibling in the Eagle Rock pool, steadily improving her limited swimming skills and overcoming her own discomfort with deep water. She continued to put a lot of work into that effort and the result was a notable increase in her physical skills, as well as a gain in confidence when in the school pool

Brianna Eagle Rock School Swimmer

As with most fledgling swimmers, Brianna’s style was “all out,” which means she swam with all of her effort in order to stay afloat. This frantic floundering resulted in a rapid depletion of energy and an increase in the resultant fear of head-high water. It took a long time for her to develop the stamina to swim one length of the pool

After a few months of taking her morning swims most seriously, Brianna joined our Learn to Swim Class where we work on form, confidence, style and the rudiments and history of swimming in the United States.

The class also provides a video analysis of each swimmer’s skills, and it was through this visual assessment that Brianna was able to Continue reading…

The Value of Intramurals for High School Students

Here at Eagle Rock School we’re huge advocates of the notion that sports build character. That’s why we’ve put away our pens, pencils and books, pulled on our intramural uniforms and headed out to the Field of Dreams each Wednesday for the past two-dozen years,

Eagle Rock School Intramurals

Student and staff housemates become teammates as we compete against one another. At any given time during the school year, we have four houses competing and two houses refereeing. Which means everybody’s involved.

For three trimesters each year, you can find us out on the Continue reading…

Eagle Rock Students Overcome Fears and Take the Plunge

For people who grew up swimming like fishes, it’s hard to imagine how challenging it is to learn how to swim later in life. For people who don’t learn how to swim at an early age, the water — in even a placid pool — can be terrifying.

Among my favorite destinations at Eagle Rock School is our swimming pool, accessible to all students and staffed with Red Cross-certified student and staff lifeguards to keep everybody safe. In fact, one objective of our aquatics program is to make the pool available to students of all swimming abilities. This is particularly important in a diverse community such as the one that populates Eagle Rock.

Javonnie_Swimming_Eagle_Rock_School

Statistics show that in the United States, black children drown at a rate that is three times that of white children, and Latino children drown at double the rate of white children. Furthermore, children of any race who have parents who don’t swim have only a 17 percent chance of learning how to swim themselves.

But it’s far more likely that children from communities of color are likely to not only have parents who can’t swim, but probably don’t have Continue reading…