Among my prior chess teaching experiences before I began Kids & Chess, I worked for the biggest and most successful chess instructional company in my home state. I wish I could say I enjoyed the experience!
It was lots of fun teaching chess, and I don’t mean to make you think otherwise. I still love it and I’ll always love teaching, whatever the subject.
But one of the reasons I love teaching is to see the proverbial lightbulb turn on when a student ‘gets it,’ and working with this company, that didn’t happen a whole lot.
It wasn’t that the kids weren’t bright, or that the instructors didn’t care. And thankfully we weren’t busy teaching the kids wrong information, like the other company I had worked for!
There just wasn’t much organization within the company. At least, not when it came to the chess.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Let me walk you through a typical day teaching with this company:
The instructors were required to be there 15 minutes before class was to begin. There could be anywhere from 3–5 of us scheduled at a given school week after week. This was an afterschool enrichment program contracted with the school, so when we arrived classes were in session and wrapping up for the day.
Since we couldn’t use any classrooms until the bell rang and the kids got out for the day, we would gather outside to meet our lead instructor at that school to go over the material we would be teaching that day.
Yes, that’s right. We were not furnished a copy of the curriculum for the course we were assigned at any point during the term. More on that later!
Our lead instructor would gather us around and pass out a single page worksheet, many times pulled from a chess workbook someone else had published, and then they’d disappear and leave us to figure out the material on the worksheet!
FIGURING THINGS OUT
Figuring out the material was no problem for any of us, as we were all strong chess players, but there was never any training given on how to teach! So while each of us knew how the concept worked and how it could be applied during a game of chess, there was no guidance on how to teach it!
Remarkable, I know… especially considering that this was the biggest and the most successful chess instruction company in the state!
While this wasn’t too big of a deal for me — again, I’m a natural teacher and have taught many things to many people, including math, guitar, chess and even baseball — I knew I was the exception. Most of the teachers in this program were just really good chess players. Some of them were recognized as United States Chess Federation Masters.
But that says nothing about their ability to teach!
Now I was busy teaching my own classes while the other instructors were teaching theirs, so I never directly observed any of the other teachers. Perhaps they were all fine instructors without the need for any training or coaching at all.
But if you’ve ever tried to teach a room full of kids after a full day of classes, when they’re staying afterschool and their other friends have gone home for the day, you know how difficult it can be. Even if you haven’t, you can probably guess that it’s not the easiest or most natural thing!
I DID IT MY WAY
While the Sinatra song is a classic nearly everyone loves, what this system did for chess was to allow each instructor to teach the material in whatever way they chose to. This is nice for the teachers, but what about the students?! Aren’t we there for them? Isn’t that what this is all about?
One kid taking intermediate level classes from me would learn about the same topic as another kid in a different intermediate level class on the same day, but they could potentially (and likely would) learn it completely differently, with different examples and using different teaching styles.
Perhaps one of our teaching styles wasn’t a good fit for some of the students, causing them to learn very little — or even nothing at all!
Most troubling of all was that it became clear after several weeks that there was simply no curriculum at all! The reason we didn’t get a copy of the curriculum or the lesson plans for the term at any point is because there were no such materials!
THE WRONG APPROACH
This haphazard approach to teaching chess wasn’t sitting well with me, and was a major reason that when I developed my company, I first wrote a complete curriculum with supplemental workbooks for the students to keep so they could reinforce what was being learned.
Chess is such a complex subject, with so much to learn, that trying to teach it without a curriculum or a “through-line” is just asking for trouble! Can you imagine your kid going to their science class and learning about concepts like force, momentum, gravity and acceleration without the teacher having a curriculum to use and without any guidance from a department head or school official?
It would be challenging, to say the least!
I believe chess should be taught in a structured and cohesive way that helps students connect the dots, not only between the chess concepts being taught, but also to understand the life lessons contained within them.
CHESS IS A TEAM GAME
If you don’t have a chess coach who emphasizes teamwork as a key strategy for winning (just as it is in life most times), your kid is not going to get the message that chess is a team game! A chess player needs to treat their army like a basketball coach leads his or her team: the players on the floor are all working together toward a common goal, and it’s going to take all five of them acting as a unit, all on the same page, to succeed.
Chess is no different. Yet so many instructors don’t teach it this way!
CALCULATION
Another thing missing from many chess lessons is the idea of examining consequences before you make your move. In chess, this is called calculation and the easiest way to define it is to say that calculation is figuring out what’s going to happen next.
All players of all levels and all ages must calculate when they play chess! The entire game comes down to actions and their consequences — both positive and negative. Kind of like the ‘game’ of life when you think about it.
But again, unless this skill is taught and nurtured until it becomes strong, a student is on their own to figure it out. So many bad habits can be formed, and so much frustration can come from knowing that you have to calculate but not being given any guidance as to how that’s done.
So I make it a point to teach calculation and consequences. I make it a point to teach teamwork. And I make it a point to teach all of the other little things that instructors often overlook because they take them for granted. Strong chess players don’t think about their calculation process, and many can’t describe it even if you ask them to. How can they be expected to guide anyone in learning how to calculate?!
It takes deliberate focus and a connected, harmonious method for kids to get the most out of chess, which is what we all want.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Let’s be real here: chess is a great game, but chances are that most parents put their kids in chess class not because they think they have the next Bobby Fischer or Magnus Carlsen on their hands. Instead, it’s because they want their kids to develop life skills like planning, critical thinking, judgment, decision making and risk-analysis, to name a few.
These skills will never come from chess unless they’re taught.
You’re invited to email me anytime to discuss anything I write about here. I love to engage my audience and I’m always striving to learn. There are a great many things some of you can teach me. I’m sure of it! coachrob@kidsnchess.com
