Volunteer teaching chess to elementary students
By Jason Schultz, The Palm Beach Post
6:04 p.m. EDT, October 8, 2011
At Galaxy Elementary School, a volunteer is trying to teach the youngest of students how to get where they want in life by teaching them how to get to checkmate.
Learning and playing chess, Ira Klosk says, increases critical thinking skills, which can then lead to other achievements later in life.
“The way to build it is if you get them at a young age,” said Klosk, who runs a program teaching kindergartners and pre-kindergartners how to play the game.
Galaxy Principal Joe Schneider said Klosk taught kindergartners to play chess for years at Poinciana Elementary School in Boynton Beach when Schneider worked there. This year, Klosk has moved the chess program to Galaxy.
“The key to this is there is no cost to taxpayers,” said Klosk, 78, a retired lawyer who volunteers in the classroom once a week.
Klosk said he decided to move to Galaxy in part for a new challenge because he had been at Poinciana, a magnet school, for years. He wanted to see whether he could take a different group of students and build up their academic performance through chess.
Galaxy Elementary had 85 percent of its students on free and reduced-price lunch last year, a measure of the poverty level of students. By comparison, about half of Poinciana’s students were in that category. And while Poinciana received an A grade from the state last year, Galaxy got a D.
Whether or not the next great chess master like Bobby Fischer emerges from a Galaxy classroom, Klosk said their early development of critical thinking will result in better grades and test scores.
“I just hope I live long enough to see it,” Klosk joked.
Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com
A very noble cause.