About
Sarah Waxman, swim instructor for children on the Outer Banks.
Sarah is a Certified Infant Swimming Resource instructor and the owner of Little Fins OBX. She has run Little Fins OBX since October 2023, teaching ISR Self-Rescue® to children from 6 months to 6 years old.
She lives and works on the Outer Banks, based in Southern Shores with an office in Kill Devil Hills, and teaches families from Duck down to Manteo.
The certification
What “Certified ISR Instructor” means.
Infant Swimming Resource is the organisation behind the Self-Rescue® method, and it has been teaching it since 1966. ISR reports more than 19,000,000 lessons delivered, more than 1,000 instructors certified, and instructors working in 20 countries.
Those numbers are ISR's record, not Little Fins' own. What matters to you is narrower: a Certified ISR Instructor is trained and certified by ISR to teach this specific method to this specific age group, one child at a time, rather than running a group swim class.
Little Fins OBX teaches to ISR's curriculum and standards. It does not offer a shortened version of it.
The water here
On the Outer Banks, water is never far away.
A backyard pool behind a beach house. A canal at the end of the street. The sound on one side of the island and the ocean on the other. Children here grow up beside water, and the families who live here year round know how quickly that changes a summer day.
ISR's mission line puts the reason for this work plainly: “Not one more child drowns.” That is the standard Little Fins OBX teaches to.
Follow the lessons on InstagramWhere Little Fins teaches
Based in Southern Shores, teaching across the Outer Banks.
Little Fins OBX is based in Southern Shores, North Carolina, with an office in Kill Devil Hills. Families come from across the beach for lessons.
- Southern Shores
- Kitty Hawk
- Kill Devil Hills
- Nags Head
- Colington
- Duck
- Corolla
- Manteo
- Wanchese
The exact lesson location is not published here. Sarah confirms the pool and the meeting point by email when a place is offered. If you would rather read the detail first, how a session runs and the swim lesson questions cover it, and a lesson request reaches her directly.
Lesson requests
Talk to Sarah about your child
Send a lesson request with your name and email. Sarah replies personally with availability, the ages she can take right now, and the honest answer to whatever you are worried about.