A Short History on How to Start a High School Chess Course: by Arnie Nermo
As a teacher of Gifted and Special Education and an avid chess player, I have been interested in Chess as it relates to education for well over 20 years. It all started at William Beagle, a small high-school in Surrey, BC. The way I ran my chess club as a teacher was to run it hard, every single lunch hour…no staff room breaks for me, but plenty of fun, memories and CHESS.
Through the years, the numbers would fluctuate between 4 to 30 members. It was during the times that I had 30+ students, I would say to myself, “Why the ‘heck’ aren’t I teaching this as a real course?!”
The first hurtle has always been getting past the principals, who quite frankly just didn’t care. The real issue for them is that a teacher costs money and so it’s more important to have them covering regular classes, not any frills.
In an effort to bolster my argument that Chess is not a frill, I researched several leads and found that in Canada, Chess has been taught in the school curriculum in various forms, but usually piggy-backed into the Math curriculum or left for volunteers to bring it into the classroom for short periods of time.
My dream was a Chess course that could stand by itself and be taught on an equal footing with Science, Math or Socials Studies. Pursuing this endeavor, I was once invited to Chess legend, Nathan Divinsky’s home near UBC. He gave me a video, some kindly advice and later sent me some of the fascinating research that showed the latest educational benefits of Chess.
Although I was undaunted and enthusiastic, the dream that I had nurtured just didn’t look like it would succeed.
Here is the full fantastic article.
Thank you. It’s very helpful.
Very good news on bring chess into school curriculum.
At Ho Math and Chess we have been embarking on a different mission that is how we can actually integrate chess into math so students can use them to improve math?
Over the past 15 years, we have dedicated to teaching math through chess and our research team also have created many world’s first math, chess, and puzzles integrated workbooks.
It is really incredible to see some of my students ask for Frankho puzzles or Frankho mazes before working on “pure” math worksheets.
Puzzles do not really exist in math textbooks and on the other hand puzzles boooks do not really teach math, these to subjects never were really integrated. Chess puzzles are most of time just “chess puzzles” so all three exist in their separate own worlds.
What we have done at Ho
Math and Chess Learning centre is to intergrate math, chess, and puzzles. We have successfully done it by using our innovative technology.
I believe the future trend of math education especially for elementary lower grades is to integrate math with games such as chess and not just “play” games but truly integrate it into math worksheets.