By Foss Swim School May is Water Safety Month, and every year Foss Swim School makes a special effort to highlight the importance of respecting water and learning to swim. For pediatricians like Dr. Julie Ewasiuk, who practices at South Lake Pediatrics in a suburb of Minneapolis, any month and every month is water safety month. “A big part of being a pediatrician is counseling parents about keeping kids safe and healthy,” Dr. Ewasiuk explained. “Water safety is one of the things we talk about regularly, starting with infants. As soon as they get mobile, there’s a risk – drowning is the seco ..read more

By Foss Swim School   It’s Water Safety Month, and that means summer is right around the corner. It’s a time when families head out to have fun, often in or around water. Whether members of your family are brand-new swimmers or already know their way around the water, it’s important that they—and you—know how to stay safer around water. Part of what makes summer challenging from a water safety perspective is that people are often visiting new environments and trying new things. So before you begin, sit down with everyone who will be at the water and lay down some ground rules.   Unde ..read more

We love May! Not only is it when we start to get excited about a summer of fun in the water, it’s also Water Safety Month, a time when we share our passion for water safety with our FOSS families and anyone we can reach.   The goal of Water Safety Month, which is recognized nationally, is to draw extra focus to this critical issue before the summer swim season starts, in hopes that we can reach more parents and swimmers to give them information that will make them more aware and deliberate about water safety.   We are especially proud to participate in Water Safety Month because of ..read more

By Foss Swim School   Foss Swim School has a number of locations around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, but our new Apple Valley school has extended our proven swimming curriculum to a new audience. As our southernmost location in the Twin Cities, our Apple Valley school is already enrolling new students who had few options for our type of swim school within a reasonable distance, and we can’t wait to start teaching them on April 22! We are still putting the finishing touches on our newest school, so we have been meeting with families and students in nearby schools for preview lessons. We ..read more

By Foss Swim School It’s been quite a year for world-championship swimmer Regan Smith, a Foss Swim School alum who is a strong contender for Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics. While the final team will be determined in June, Regan’s history of success at the 2020 Olympic Games and in World Championship competition means that her time between now and the summer is focused on getting to the Games – training, competing, and getting emotionally ready. But if there’s one truth she’s experienced over the past year, it’s that things don’t always go according to plan, even when you have the ability ..read more

By Foss Swim School   At FOSS, our motto is “Love Water,” and we know that an essential part of this love is understanding how to be safe around it. Water safety doesn’t happen by accident, and it isn’t a one-time lesson people learn at a specific point in their lives.   At Foss Swim School, we are committed to helping people be safer around water by teaching them to swim confidently, and there is no substitute for time in a pool with a skilled, engaging instructor. We also realize that learning is a continuum, that not everyone has the opportunity to attend swim lessons when t ..read more

Meet Kae Joyner! Swim Teacher | Ballwin, MO What is your favorite color? Blue.   What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Cookie dough.   What is your favorite food? Curry.   What is your favorite animal? Dogs.   What is your favorite swim skill? Diving for rings.   What is your favorite part about working at FOSS? My co-workers!   What is your favorite FOSS story?  I had a student that was working super hard the whole quarter, and they were just a progression standard or two off from moving up, and on the last day of classes something just clicked, and they ..read more

By Foss Swim School   We are fortunate as a team and as a company to be able to make such a positive impact on the world, and we have fun while doing it! Teaching people to swim both enriches and saves lives, and there’s nothing we’d rather be doing. Our success comes from our FOSS families. As a company, we try to pay our good fortune forward every year by doing good things in our communities, from our headquarters in Minnesota to our school locations across North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. In 2023, we found new ways to give back while continuing to support many of ..read more

By Susan Foss, co-founder of Foss Swim School   As the 30th anniversary year of Foss Swim School draws to a close, I feel so happy and proud of what this school has become and of the exceptional people who work here. We knew from the start that to be successful, we not only needed to have the best swim curriculum and purpose-built learning pools, but a strong culture that would help us hire and keep great people. Our success depended on it! It was important right from the beginning to decide what kind of culture we wanted to have. People matter. Our early success meant we couldn’t do it a ..read more

Meet Jessica Peterson! Swim Teacher | Maple Grove, MN What is your favorite color? Purple. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Pirates Bounty. What is your favorite food? Chicken Kiev. What is your favorite animal? Orca Whales. What is your favorite swim skill? Dolphin Kicks. What is your favorite part about working at FOSS? Watching kids learn how to be safe in the water while having fun! What is your favorite FOSS story?  I have a swimmer who I have taught since they were in babies. In babies, he would be so excited to do his back floats that he would vibrate with excitement. He st ..read more