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Hello! My name is Tami Kellar, and I am passionate about water safety and swimming lessons.
I have always loved the water. It was literally my second home. From water skiing vacations with my family to our weekly family swim at the community pool, the water was a part of nearly every family outing. I started swimming competitively in fifth grade and went on to swim in college where my team secured the State Champion title in 1993 and 1994. As many swimmers do, I started teaching swimming lessons and became a lifeguard at the age of 15.
Upon graduation, I secured my first professional position at a YMCA in Albany, Oregon as the Aquatics Director and Swim Coach. I loved helping people discover their love and passion for the water. As I continued to grow in my career, I always kept aquatics close to my heart. I built aquatics into my family outings and continued to swim competitively as well as grow and develop aquatics staff.
In 2018 I accepted a job as CEO at the Great Plains Family YMCA in Weatherford, Oklahoma. It is here that I discovered how prevalent drownings are. In my first three months on the job, two children drowned in backyard pools. I was absolutely horrified. Our small community was devastated by what had happened, and I felt that I let these families down. These children needed to be in swimming lessons. These tragic losses renewed my desire to teach swimming lessons and ensure every child learned to swim.
I had known about survival swimming lessons and had always wanted to become a certified instructor, but the investment was significant, and it was difficult for me to take time away from work. I made the decision to get this training because ultimately, being able to provide survival swimming lessons allows me to serve more families, make a big difference in my community and prevent drownings.
The training itself was a fantastic experience. Judy Heumann is an expert in child development, learning theory, and behavioral techniques. Judy sees everything and helps her students to see and adjust their teaching methods to get results. While I had come to this training with a significant amount of experience, Judy and her training techniques are advanced and vastly different than anything that I had previously been taught or experienced. If you are interested in being a survival swim instructor, I would highly recommend taking this training. If you are considering swimming lessons for your children, I can say that this training is second to none and you will not regret enrolling your child with an instructor certified through Infant Aquatics.
I teach at the Great Plains Family YMCA in Weatherford and Yukon, Oklahoma and I am willing to travel to your home if you live outside of the service area.
I currently hold the following certifications:
