About

About ISR

Founded in 1966 by Dr. Harvey Barnett, Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) is now the global leader in the industry it pioneered: survival swimming lessons for infants and young children. Our team of more than 1,000 Certified ISR Instructors in more than 20 countries provides the safest and most effective survival swimming lessons available. The ISR Self-Rescue instruction our students receive today is the product of more than 50 years of research and development and has resulted in more than 15 million safe lessons worldwide.

ISR believes that pool fences, supervision, and pool alarms are important parts of a necessary multi-layered approach to drowning prevention. However, traditional lines of defense break down, and the over 4,000 drowning deaths per year bear a grim testament to the fact that traditional approaches are missing a key component: the child. ISR’s core conviction is that the child is the most important part of a drowning prevention strategy.

Children are curious, capable, and have an uncanny ability to overcome obstacles like pool fences; at ISR we take that ability and teach them skills to potentially save themselves if they find themselves in the water alone.

 

Meet Your Instructor

I am a mommy of 3 beautiful children. I’m originally from Ohio, but water has always been a big part of my life. I went through a similar program to ISR at 2 years old and swam competitively from the time I was 5 until I graduated high school.

We started looking into swim programs when my daughter was about 18 months. At that time, I had no idea about ISR, so I enrolled her in traditional mommy and me swim lessons at our local gym 2 times per week. She hated it. She cried the entire time, and at the end of her session, she had gotten absolutely nothing out of it. Another local family recommended ISR, and I signed her up right away. I thought it was pure magic. At the end of a 6-week course, my daughter could not only swim but also roll back and float entirely on her own.

Never before had I thought about being a swim instructor, but watching my daughter gain confidence in the water and self-rescue gave me a passion for teaching other children how to do the same and give parents the same peace of mind that ISR had given me.

After my son finished his lessons at 18 months, I took the plunge and never looked back. I completed my instructor training in 2017, and my passion for drowning prevention has only grown from there.

I hope that every parent sees the importance of aquatic self-rescue lessons and that not one more will have to endure the tragedy of losing a child to a drowning accident. Watching a child go from being uneasy and unsure to having complete confidence and loving the water makes my “job” as an instructor beyond rewarding. I am grateful for every child I have been able to work with thus far and look forward to teaching many, many more in the future!

-Sarah DeGennaro, Certified ISR Instructor

Is your swim instructor a Certified ISR Instructor?

There are many instructors who say they teach ISR techniques, however, unless they are listed on the ISR Instructor locator on the official ISR website and meet the criteria below, they are NOT Certified ISR Instructors.

All Certified ISR Instructors:

  • Have an email address ending in @infantswim.com

  • Can provide parents with a copy of their current ISR Certificate for review

  • Offer lessons five consecutive days per week, for a maximum of 10 minutes each day

  • Will require your child to be registered through ISR’s Online Registration Process and approved to begin lessons by our Registration Evaluation Team (approval email will come from an email address ending in @infantswim.com)

  • Complete the Daily BUDS Discussion form with you prior to each lesson

  • Can be found on the instructor locator at locator.infantswim.com