Who would have thought. As someone who grew up here and used to affectionately call the place ‘Slow-vato’ due to its lack of excitement, I never thought my hometown would grace the pages of a prestigious rag like Business Week. The Marin IJ got wind of the story and did a nice little write up about Novato being one of the best towns in suburbia.
Not to knock Novato. I missed it when I lived elsewhere, and definitely found a true appreciation for it when I lived in Ohio and braved Lake Effect weather. If you don’t know what Lake Effect weather is, I really don’t want to tell you because if you don’t enjoy sticking your hand in a freezer for 2-3 months, you won’t like it.
In the article, Novato was noted for its high-quality schools. I consider Swim With Cheryll a high-quality Novato school, focused on teaching swimming.
Cheryll Boissevain is the founder of Swim with Cheryll, and I teach at her pool in the summer months. She has a beautiful pool located off Rowland Boulevard in Novato with a beautiful backyard to match. It is a quite, nurturing place to learn to swim. If you want to know my schedule, just click here.
Cheryll is an amazing teacher that is my mentor when I cannot get through an issue myself. She has more than 35 years in the business. She is also the Aquatic Program Director at the JCC and has turned that pool around with her tireless effort for establishing the best swim program possible. She is also incredibly generous. We are a good team, and with the additional staff at the JCC, we’re the best swim team staff in the county. If I didn’t know so, I’d go elsewhere.
One of the things Cheryll has done is bring swimming back to school curriculum. There once was a time where learning to swim was as important to schools as teaching reading and math. Aside of creating a swim curriculum for our own JCC ECE kids, Cheryll came up with the ingenious idea to extend that invitation and allow the Marin French School to take group swimming classes at the JCC in the Spring during school hours. I’ve also seen her create such programs at her home pool with a local Novato pre-school.
Like I mentioned, I have a new-found appreciation for Novato. And when I left the pool and started teaching in the classroom, I had a new-found appreciation for teaching swimming, which is why I went back. Novato and it’s swim curriculum is a great combination. Hey, we’re voted the best in Business Week.
