-
SEASTARS Aquatics offers swim lessons year-round! It is our promise to provide fun and fear free lessons to anyone who needs them.
-
We have one instructor, Pablo, providing swim lessons during our spring season. Pablo is offering swim lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays afternoons from 2:30 to 4:30 Currently, Pablo’s schedule is full. An opening could become available so if you would like to be added to our waitlist I can contact you with that information. We are currently searching for an instructor for the spring season and to also take over for Pablo the end of May. He will be graduating high school the end of May and will be taking some time off before leaving for college.
-
Our head coach/instructor, Gracie Miller, will be offering summer swim lessons beginning Tuesday, May 27th, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in the half-hour time slots between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm. Some of these time slots have already been reserved.
-
Although we are a Year-Round swim program, we do have blocks of time and holiday closings that coincide with the Escambia County School District’s schedule. We are currently in our spring schedule which began March 17, 2025 and runs through to May 23rd. With Memorial Day being Monday, May 26th, the official start of our summer season will be Tuesday, May 27th, 2025. The summer season will run through Thursday, August 7th. We will be closed the week of August 11th for the first week of school. We will reopen the week of August 18th for our fall season.
-
To schedule swim lessons, contact Debbie Taylor at the email address and Contact Form located below. All of our swim team coaches and swim lesson instructors have experience teaching and working with young children, special needs individuals, and are lifeguard and CPR certified. Please look below to find the prices for both types of lessons.
Instruction levels:
- Water Adjustment Children learn how to have fun, play with others in the pool, and work with an instructor.
- Primary Skills Learn to float horizontal, breath, and basic front crawl and backstroke.
- Stroke Development Refining front crawl, backstroke, and learning breaststroke and butterfly.
- Stroke Refinement Achieving maximum propulsion in desired stroke(s) utilizing videotaping and feedback sessions.
Swim Lesson Pricing
Private Lessons |
$125 for 4 Lessons |
|---|---|
|
Semi-Private Lessons (you provide the two swimmers) |
$125.00 for 4 Lessons (two swimmers sharing the lessons with one instructor) (you provide the two swimmers sharing the lessons) |
Our swim lessons are scheduled and priced by the Session. Each Session of lessons includes four half-hour lessons, and each full Session of lessons is $125.00. These lessons are done at the Salvation Army Pool located on 1501 N. Q. Street.
The prices are the same for both Private lessons (one swimmer per instructor) and Semi-Private lessons (two swimmers per instructor). You are paying for the time in the water, not per swimmer. We don’t offer group instruction. Payment for each Session of four lessons is due the FIRST day of lessons and can be paid by cash or a check made out to SEASTARS. We don’t accept credit cards.
We understand that there may be a need for you to cancel a lesson at some time. We just ask that you give us at least two hours notice before the lesson is to begin. If a cancellation is made after the two-hour deadline, we will not be able to reschedule the missed lesson and will have to charge for that day’s lesson. Most cancellations or reschedules should go through Debbie but if you have to cancel a lesson the day a lesson is to begin you should contact your swim instructor first before contacting Debbie. You may not be able to get Debbie right away and the instructor will need to know not to expect you.
Semi-private lessons are set up for those coming to us with two students already. For example, siblings, cousins, or friends that would like to share the Session together. We don’t have students waiting to be paired up with another for these lessons.
Students sharing Semi-Private lessons should be close in age and swim level. We ask that a parent or responsible adult family member assist in the pool during the Semi-Private lessons when they involve students under the age of 3 yrs old.
Private Lessons are the best and recommended fit for our special needs students. Therefore, we do not pair our special needs students in Semi-Private lessons.
We schedule lessons Mondays through Thursdays, and we leave Fridays open for any makeup lessons we may need to do because of bad weather or pool issues that may arise. Friday makeup lessons are only for lessons we had to cancel. Client cancellations can be made up on an available day that same week or renumbered to the next available schedule day that matches your typical scheduled days and times. Makeup lesson times vary from 11:00 am – 4:30 pm each day depending on remaining availability.
We do not offer evening or weekend lessons since our instructors also coach our swim team from 5:00-7:00 pm each evening and swim meets many of the weekends.
Most of our clients like to spread the Session of four lessons over a two-week period doing two lessons per week. We also have clients that do only one lesson per week. Many of our clients like to keep the lessons running indefinitely until they tell Debbie to take them off the schedule. This is done to ensure the client will have their times and days still available if they decide to keep going after the first Session of lessons. There is no obligation to pay for these future Sessions ahead of time. Payment is only needed on the first day of each new Session of four lessons. It is simply done to hold the days and times for you so future weeks don’t get booked by another client, thus leaving you forced to choose another time or day, or, both time and day. However you choose to schedule is fine with us.
Once lessons are scheduled, all the swimmers will need during the lessons are a bathing suit and a towel. The instructor will have everything else needed for the lessons, and that includes lots of fun toys!
MEET OUR SWIM LESSONS STAFF
There is one full time staff and two other part time employees for SEASTARS Aquatics in 2025. All lesson instructors and coaches are certified through USA Swimming and have passed a background check, and are certified in CPR, First aid, Lifeguarding, and Safety Training for Swim Coaches. They have all completed The Foundations of Coaching level 1 test through ASCA ( The American Swim Coaches Association).
Debbie Taylor – Lesson Coordinator/Data Specialist
I first became part of SEASTARS as a Swim Mom in the summer of 2006. My son Clay Taylor joined SEASTARS barely being able to swim across the pool. In his 9 years being part of the team, he went on to become an excellent swimmer and earned many achievements along the way including going to the Southeastern’s Swimming Championships in Tennessee and then later making it to the State Championships with his high school. Clay could never have done this had he not joined SEASTARS. A couple of years later, after Clay joined SEASTARS, I was approached with the opportunity to take over the Lesson Coordinator job for SEASTARS. I have been doing this as a part-time job for about 15 years now. The job has evolved into working with our website, and data work as well.
I am also a Substitute Teacher for the Escambia County School System. I do all of my substitute teaching at NB Cook Elementary and work almost every day. Because of this, I answer most of my calls, texts, or emails in the later afternoon and evening hours.
Email is the optimum way to communicate with me and receive swim lesson information. Initially, there is a lot of information shared between the client and me, and it is best to keep all this information in one email thread.
My email address is [email protected]. Or, use the Contact Form to the right.
Information to include in the form:
Name and Age of Swim Student, Special Needs or Neurotypical, Details of Special Need, and Days and Times best for you or Flexible.
Pablo Urbiztondo
Swim Lesson Instructor
(Year-round lessons) (Ages 2yrs and up)
Pablo has been part of the SEASTARS swim team for four years. He began providing swim lessons for SEASTARS during the spring of 2022 and has provided swim lessons for our special needs and neurotypical clients year round ever since. Pablo also coaches our swim team alongside our other two coaches, Gracie Miller, and our Executor Director and Co-Founder of SEASTARS, Robin Heller.
Pablo is certified in CPR, First aid, Lifeguarding, and Safety Training for Swim Coaches.
He is part of the film club at the Pensacola Private School of Liberal Arts, where Pablo is a student in the 12th grade.
PERSONAL STATEMENT: Teaching people how to swim has become one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life, so far. When I joined SEASTARS four years ago as a swimmer I was fairly new to swimming but the coaches and swimmers have helped me so much!
Gracie Miller
Assistant Director/Head Coach/Lesson Instructor
(Summer lessons only) (Ages 1yr and up)
Salvation Army Pool
We use the Salvation Army Community Center Aquatics center for all programs. The facility is located at 1501 North Q Street Pensacola Fl 32505. In the Summer SEASTARS advanced swimmers provide free swimming lessons to Salvation Army Campers to help “give back” to The Salvation Army for their kindness in letting us use their facility.