Jim Celone makes a difference for kids

Courant.com
Chess Revival
Energetic Mentor Introduces Kids To Game Of Kings
By ADRIAN BRUNE
The Hartford Courant
November 1, 2007

Ray Li was pinned. His opponent, the unassuming, gap-toothed Rishubh Agrawal, 11, did the deed. He moved his knight crosswise across the board, mercilessly capturing Li’s queen before adding a bishop and then a few pawns.

Then Agrawal paused, his fingers lingering above another pawn, just long enough to increase the tension.

That’s when the trash-talk started.”Take it, take it, take it,” Li said, as he waited to lose another pawn.”I’m not stupid,” Agrawal replied.

“You’re not? When did that happen?” Li retorted, just minutes before the jump-jump toward victory.Agrawal got the final word: “Checkmate.”

As Li left Holy Infant School in Orange that Friday afternoon, he was planning his strategy for the next week’s game. “I just didn’t control the center this time,” he lamented. “But I’ll take him next week.”

A favorite game for players ranging from kids to heads of state, chess has enjoyed a coolness revival among adolescents and teenagers across Connecticut through school programs, teams and even high school classes on the game’s theory.

And one of the people leading the effort is Jim Celone, founder of Educational Technologies, an organization that for eight years has promoted chess as an educational tool in Connecticut.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, your ethnicity, or where you come from, once you sit down in front of a chess board, it’s one brain against the other,” Celone said.

“It’s one of the best things to build skills, pattern recognition and creativity.”

“I’ve seen kids who can’t focus in the classroom for 10 seconds but who can sit down for a chess game and concentrate for 30 minutes straight.”

On any given day, Celone, a math teacher at New Haven’s Amistad Academy and founder of West Haven High School’s state champion chess team, oversees 15 after-school programs in southern Connecticut. He also hosts two major tournaments during the fall and winter, including the New Haven Greater Fall Open on Saturday, and the state championship in the spring.

While chess is often thought of as the sport of child prodigies and nerds, Celone’s version of the game produces a lively group of competitors with all the energy of an elementary school soccer team some who say that chess changed their lives.

“If I hadn’t started playing chess, I have no idea what I’d be doing,” said Ellis Pinckley, who took Celone’s chess theory class at West Haven high about three years ago and is now an instructor. “I wish I could play every day – teaching it is as good as it gets.”

Here is the full story.