FAQ from A to B

by Guy Peckham, parent

A is for Aquatics

Q. When did you have your first inspiration to join Clearwater School?

A. In 1962 (several decades before the school opened in Seattle). My family lived in Wabash, a small town in north central Indiana. Our city's great claim was "The first electrically lighted city in the world". I always assumed this was true, but never checked historical records for the facts. However, while we had electricity in abundance, the town was missing a public pool or beach.

This is where my dad enters the picture. He grew up as an all-sports athlete in upstate New York, and had a great desire for all of us kids to learn to swim. With no local place to go, the local Red Cross offered swimming lessons at a lake about 20 miles away. So it was early in the summer that I found myself bussed to a lake with chilly greenish brown water, being coached - or coaxed - to submerge and open my eyes. I did, and I was frightened beyond all measure from all the terrible monsters I knew were lurking in the water.

After returning home I told my parents that I would never go back to the swim lessons. My dad was quite distressed at my wanting to quit, offering me every incentive he could think of to keep me in the class. This was not an easy task - I wasn't giving in. So, the bidding escalated until he offered to buy me a new bike if I would stay in the class. Nothing doing, I wouldn't budge.

In the following summer, our city opened an Olympic-sized pool (paid for by the Honeywell corporation). I once again was enrolled in swim classes. This time, though, things were different: I was a year older, but mostly I was really ready to learn. Learning to swim was now fun, plus I knew I was safe because monsters couldn't survive in chlorinated water.

B is for Biking

Q. So how does this relate to the Clearwater School?

A. I thought you'd never ask. Our daughter, Claire, a Clearwater student, was being encouraged by us — a.k.a. her parents with an agenda — to learn to ride a bike several years ago. Over the course of numerous outings, we were finding that things were just not working out. Claire was not grasping the concept of balancing, and she soon tired of falling off her bike. We finally realized that our overenthusiastic approach was not helping Claire at all, and we stopped the Dad & Mom bike school. Instead, we decided to wait for Claire to show her own interest in learning to ride. Eventually, this happened.

Her pace was to practice about once every two months. In each successive practice she demonstrated remarkable improvement, so much so that by the third outing she had learned to balance for 5-10 seconds at a time. Claire's skills and interest have grown steadily since this time, and she now requests that all join in a family bike ride at least once a week.

C is for Claire

Claire's interest and enthusiasm in learning are much stronger forms of motivation than anything we could provide. Watching her learn to ride a bike taught us a lot.

Reprinted from the April 2002 issue of The School Bull, the newsletter of The Clearwater School