John Walker was the one of the fastest runners in New Zealand with him coming second in the 500m run. 26 years ago he joined the Auckland committee but he believed that every child should know how to swim. So a couple years ago he got the help from other people to put money towards swimming lessons that were free.

On Wednesday I went to the swimming lessons with my school. We got split into two groups with one group going at 12:00 and the other at 12:30. I was put into the 12:00 one. The bus was late about 10 minutes after it needed to be here but the ride was fun going there. We just sat and talked and played hand games. When we got there we had to get changed but everyone already had their togs on under their uniform.

We got to the pool and we sat on the edge, they told us the riled and then we got in.They had us swim in freestyle to see what level we are in for swimming and I got into level 3. We all went off into our groups and got started. The first thing we did was swimming laps in different styles. Then we played a game where you had to try and pick up sticks from under the water but we had a challenge each time we went to go for e.g swimming with trying to balance something on your head or only using your arms well swimming. We has one time leftover so we convinced our coach (Tegan) To let us do a relay race. There were 2 groups and my group won.

We finished off and got out and got changed. I was the first one finished and I waited for a while then we left. In the bus it was quite fun, we did each other’s hair and talked and again played hand games.