Aqua Culture Swim School is
Maryland’s Premier Swim School!

Our Mission:
The Aqua Culture Swim School mission is to grow happy, healthy, responsible kids who love to learn.

We strive to accomplish this by:

  • Providing a fun and exciting learning environment
  • Maintaining a child centered staff and facility
  • Helping children remain safe
  • Loving and encouraging each child’s innate worth
  • Expecting the best and encouraging each child to fulfill their potential

Learn more about us:

Our Guiding Principles – Our core values determine our every decision.
Our Staff – The people who work at Aqua Culture are what sets us apart in a sea of activity opportunities.

We do business by the Book
Aqua Culture Training Center & Swim School is owned and operated according to Biblical principles.

Guiding Principles

  1. Unconditional Respect: Respect must be unconditional or trust and security is lost. Always maintain respect regardless of the other person’s behavior.
  2. Integrity: Do what you say, when you say and how you say. Be a person of your word.
  3. Passion for Excellence: The devil really is in the details. Approach every task with an intent to do the best possible job.
  4. Health and Safety: It is each individual’s responsibility to be safer and promote good health both at work and in their personal life.

“In matters of style swim with the current, in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
Thomas Jefferson

Aqua Culture Skills Tracking and Promotion

Skills: Aqua Culture uses the Red Cross Levels 1-5 as a framework for our lesson progression. We found that the Red Cross levels covered too broad a range of skills for our structure. Aqua Culture divides each Red Cross level into three sublevels: A, B, and C. We also added our unique drill progressions. Each sublevel has about 20 skills, and drill progression instructors track in the iClass software.

Measuring Performance/Tracking Skills: We use a 3-star system for tracking skills. The swimmers get a 1-star when they attempt a skill, a 2-star when they demonstrate a skill, and a 3-star when they master it (perform correctly and consistently). Instructors evaluate performance and update the skills-tracking system regularly. This continuous evaluation complements our perpetual programming model.

Key Skills/Red Cross Exit Skills: At each level, key skills are critical to advancing to the next level. Each of the Red Cross levels has exit skill scenarios that are required for promotion.

Promoting Classes/Swimmers: The instructor is looking for mastery of the skills at the current level to promote a class. If the swimmers in a class progress uniformly, we promote the class level. Promoting class levels avoids making families adapt to a new class time. If a swimmer progresses beyond their classmates, we contact the responsible adult and offer alternative lesson times. Requests to promote a swimmer or class are submitted by instructors for consideration.

Our Staff

What Makes Aqua Culture Swim School Different?
The people who work here. All of our instructors love children and have a burning desire to see your child grow into a happy, healthy, responsible kid. They are seasoned professionals, certified by American Red Cross and/or the US Swim School Association who are committed to a lifetime of learning. When we were in the planning stages for our swim school we realized that we wanted to do more than build another pool and teach kids front crawl. If we were going to pour our lives into something it needed to be bigger than that. We see teaching swimming and water safety as an opportunity. An opportunity to invest our lives in your children and accomplish our mission of growing happy, healthy, responsible kids who love to learn. For some of your children this will be their first organized learning experience and we are committed to making it a fun and exciting experience where they feel loved and valued. We believe in this mission so strongly that we developed a mission statement and seven guiding principles that we use to evaluate every decision. Leslie and Wayne visited swim schools all over the country interviewing owners and looking at facilities so that we could provide for you a program and facility that is not only the culmination of our dreams and experience but the experience of many others. We hope that you will give us the opportunity to serve your family.

Wayne & Leslie Ziegler

Staff Qualifications

  • Highly Trained and Certified Instructors
  • Innovative, Child Focused, Aquatic Educational Philosophy and Curriculum
  • American Red Cross Authorized Provider

Directors
Wayne & Leslie Ziegler