About
About ISR
Founded in 1966 by Dr. Harvey Barnett, Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) is now the global leader in the industry it pioneered: survival swimming lessons for infants and young children. Our team of more than 1,000 Certified ISR Instructors in more than 20 countries provides the safest and most effective survival swimming lessons available. The ISR Self-Rescue instruction our students receive today is the product of more than 50 years of research and development and has resulted in more than 15 million safe lessons worldwide.
ISR believes that pool fences, supervision, and pool alarms are important parts of a necessary multi-layered approach to drowning prevention. However, traditional lines of defense break down, and the over 4,000 drowning deaths per year bear a grim testament to the fact that traditional approaches are missing a key component: the child. ISR’s core conviction is that the child is the most important part of a drowning prevention strategy.
Children are curious, capable, and have an uncanny ability to overcome obstacles like pool fences; at ISR we take that ability and teach them skills to potentially save themselves if they find themselves in the water alone.
Meet Your Certified ISR Instructors
Laurie Whitmore
My name is Laurie Whitmore, and I am passionate about protecting the lives of children when in and around the water. I am a native of Pennsylvania but relocated to Tennessee with my family nearly 30 years ago and have called the Appalachian Mountains home ever since. I am proud to offer ISR's life-saving skills to children from Abingdon, VA to Bluff City, TN. After coming to know ISR after my grandson completed the program, I instantly knew this was my calling. I am a former teacher who left the classroom to receive my Associates in Nursing from Northeast State Community College and my Bachelors of Nursing at the University of Tennessee. Now an ISR instructor, I bring a unique blend of education and nursing care to the families I serve. Additionally, I earned my Aquatics - Autism certification through the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards (IBCCES) to meet the needs of even more families who desire to have their children enrolled in ISR. I would be honored to know your family and teach your child to save their own life in the water.
Bethany Sandefur
My name is Bethany Sandefur, and I am a Bristol native who resides in Abingdon, VA. I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Psychology in 2010, a Master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis and Autism in 2016, and became licensed as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst in 2017. Since then, I have focused on providing and supervising behavioral therapy for neurodivergent and developmentally delayed children. Before becoming a Behavior Analyst, I completed an internship with Early Intervention services, worked as a nanny, a Special Education PreK teacher’s aide, and a nursery care provider, and had multiple other roles involving children and early childhood development.
My husband and I live on a farm in Abingdon with our two daughters, the youngest of which was rolling back to float after completing ISR lessons before she could even walk! I started pursuing ISR certification after my daughter completed lessons and became certified as an ISR instructor in 2022. I am honored to be able to provide this immeasurably valuable service to our community!
Is your swim instructor a Certified ISR Instructor?
There are many instructors who say they teach ISR techniques, however, unless they are listed on the ISR Instructor locator on the official ISR website and meet the criteria below, they are NOT Certified ISR Instructors.
All Certified ISR Instructors:
Have an email address ending in @infantswim.com
Can provide parents with a copy of their current ISR Certificate for review
Offer lessons five consecutive days per week, for a maximum of 10 minutes each day
Will require your child to be registered through ISR’s Online Registration Process and approved to begin lessons by our Registration Evaluation Team (approval email will come from an email address ending in @infantswim.com)
Complete the Daily BUDS Discussion form with you prior to each lesson
Can be found on the instructor locator at locator.infantswim.com