Meet Sergeant Schools: Leading Aqualand’s Surf & Readiness Program
There’s a difference between telling children to be confident and giving them something to be confident about. Learning a skill, working through a challenge, helping a teammate, knowing what to do when something goes wrong. That’s the kind of confidence we want our homeschool students to build.
And that’s why we’re excited to have Christopher Schooley, known around Aqualand as “Sergeant Schools,” leading the readiness portion of our Surf & Readiness homeschool program.
A Marine, a Teacher, and a Coach
Chris brings 13 years of experience teaching elementary physical education and 15 years of youth sports coaching, including soccer, baseball, and football. His background is not just in physical training. It’s in teaching children: breaking skills into manageable steps, encouraging effort, and helping students learn to work together.
Before his teaching and coaching career, Chris served with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines during Desert Storm and Somalia. He also grew up surfing Northern California, spending time in Pacifica, Santa Cruz, and Capitola. His experience brings together military service, a lifelong connection to the ocean, and years spent working with young people.
For us, that combination matters. His military background brings a perspective on preparedness and responsibility. His teaching and coaching experience helps him make those lessons useful and approachable for children.
Surf With Matty, Readiness With Chris
Matty leads and supervises the surfing portion of the program, with Chris supporting instruction and the students in the water.
After the shared surf session, students separate into their age-based enrichment groups. Chris takes the older Surf & Readiness students for their dedicated readiness block, while younger children continue with their own program.
This gives our older students both experiences: surfing under Matty’s direction and practical, hands-on readiness instruction with Chris. Chris is not replacing Matty as the lead surf instructor. They are working together, with each leading the part of the day that draws on his experience.
What Does “Readiness” Mean?
Our curriculum combines ocean skills, physical fitness, outdoor knowledge, emergency awareness, and leadership. Here are the main areas students will explore:
Physical fitness and endurance: Building strength, coordination, and stamina through movement and purposeful challenges.
Navigation and outdoor resourcefulness: Understanding surroundings, finding direction, noticing hazards, and thinking through available resources.
First aid and emergency awareness: Learning basic care, recognizing when someone needs help, and understanding their role in getting that help.
Personal safety and preparedness: Practicing situational awareness, recognizing unsafe situations, and making thoughtful decisions rather than simply reacting.
Teamwork and leadership: Communicating clearly, sharing responsibility, solving problems, and learning when to lead and when to listen.
These subjects are taught through activities, games, and guided challenges. The goal is to give children opportunities to practice good judgment, not just hear adults talk about it.
Why a Separate Program for Older Students?
Surf & Readiness is designed for ages 8 and up. It combines surfing and ocean awareness with a more involved readiness curriculum than our younger-student programs.
The separate group gives older students room to work through multi-step challenges, discuss their decisions, take responsibility within a team, and practice skills that require more sustained attention. Lessons can become more involved as students demonstrate understanding, without expecting every child to arrive with the same strength, experience, or confidence.
Chris’s elementary PE background is especially relevant here. This is instruction for children, not adult military training scaled down. Readiness means learning to notice, think, communicate, and act appropriately. Sometimes the right action is stepping up. Sometimes it is stopping and asking for help.
You’ll See Him at the Pool, Too
Chris will also be helping Matty with our pool programs, bringing his youth sports coaching experience to student support, teamwork, and skill practice. Matty will lead the aquatic instruction, with Chris assisting and helping students stay engaged.
Whether at the beach or the pool, Chris’s favorite part of working with children comes back to turning “I can’t” into “I did it!”
We want our students to leave with more than a good day outside. We want them to know something they didn’t know before, do something they couldn’t do before, and understand that being capable includes looking out for the people around them.