Teaching Kids Life Lessons

Artwork by Mike Magnan

OrlandoSentinel.com

Teaching kids life lessons by teaching chess

Piece by piece, low-tech chess captures kids’ attention as they learn to plan the right moves.
Dave Weber
Sentinel Staff Writer
January 6, 2008
SANFORD

Chess is challenging Xbox every Wednesday and Friday morning at Goldsboro Elementary School.

And to the delight of teachers, some kids are finding the royal game as addictive as the video game.

Chess is a surprise hit among students at Goldsboro and other Sanford-area elementary schools that bring out the boards before and after classes. Kids are playing at home, too, voluntarily sacrificing video-gaming time for the chessboard.

“Of course I do video games,” said Jacob Campbell, 10, a fifth-grader at the school. “But this is more beneficial. And it’s more fun in some ways.”

The schools are using the low-tech game to teach new kids some old lessons embedded in chess.

“Problem solving. Character building. Thinking before you act. This fits so well with what I am trying to teach,” said Mary Lynn Hess, a Goldsboro math and science specialist who runs the before-school chess sessions in the school’s library.

Chess also is becoming a common denominator in Sanford-area elementary schools, educators say. Students of varying races, incomes and backgrounds are centering on a game that is thought to be 1,500 or more years old.

Seminole isn’t the only area school district to appreciate the value of chess in teaching students valuable skills.

In Orange County, the chess club at Hungerford Elementary in Eatonville has grown from 15 students to about 50 this year. Some schools in Volusia County also are promoting the value of rooks and pawns, but Seminole’s chess program appears more widespread and organized than the rest of Central Florida.

Just before Christmas break, about 70 kids were found bent over tables or sprawled on the floor in the Goldsboro library, intent on outsmarting their opponents.

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