Chess in Schools: Best Practices

All Things Chess
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This is an invitation to share best practices with regard to the implementation of chess in schools in public secondary education systems.

The teaching of chess to children in the United States has historically been a bottom-up phenomenon: a program is implemented in one school by a supporting principal, teacher, and/or chess program vendor; when that key CIS advocate departs, the program dies. National Chess Education Consultant Jerry Nash has stated, “Most scholastic chess programs are one person away from extinction.”

There have been relatively few successful attempts to institutionalize chess training in a way that is scalable and sustainable across multiple schools.

Changes in technology and reforms in education are now making it possible for school districts and states
to introduce chess training programs to a broader spectrum of the school population. The combination of technology and evolving chess curricula are making it possible for teachers with little or no chess experience to take on the challenges of teaching the game in a way that is aligned with their administration’s goals of achieving excellence in 21st Century skills.

There may be no silver bullets when it comes to mulit-site CIS implementations, but there are successful efforts that can serve as useful models for educators. The following 4-part, paper titled Scaling Up Chess in Schools distills lessons learned from successful CIS efforts in New York, Broward County (FL), and Europe as well as an in-depth look at the Alabama Chess in Schools Initiative.

[b]Part 1 - Opportunities & Challenges of Multi-site CIS[/b]: [url]http://www.alabamachess.org/cis/ScalingUpCIS1.pdf[/url]
[b]Part 2 - Multi-site CIS in practice [Globally, nationally, and in Alabama]: [/b][url]http://www.alabamachess.org/cis/ScalingUpCIS2.pdf[/url]
[b]Part 3 - Lessons from the ACIS Trenches[/b]: [url]http://www.alabamachess.org/cis/ScalingUpCIS3.pdf[/url]
[b]Part 4 - Designing and Managing Your CIS Project[/b]: [url]http://www.alabamachess.org/cis/ScalingUpCIS4.pdf[/url]

What is your story?

Neil Dietsch, President
Alabama Chess Federation

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Here is an interesting recent update from the European Chess Union about what is happening in Chess in Schools across the pond:

http://www.alabamachess.org/cmsms/uploads/documents/Intitial-Findings-from-the-ECU-Survey-on-Chess-in-Schools-Final.pdf

Will the US be left in Europe’s dust?

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The link to the Initial Findings from the ECU Survey above has been fixed.