David Gamberg is superintendent of two adjacent small school districts on Long Island in New York: Southold and Greenport. Gamberg is devoted to a philosophy of whole-child learning, in which play and a healthy body are as important as academics. He is constantly coming up with new ways to engage children’s imagination and creativity. His schools are alive with music, art, gardening, play, and, now, chess.
The Southold elementary school recently conducted a chess tournament with life-size chess pieces and a chess board.
According to David Gamberg, superintendent of both the Southold and Greenport school districts, the idea for bringing chess to students was born after the “simple, kind gesture offered to the students at Greenport Schools.”
With no strings attached, Wesley Wang, a 9th grade student at Jericho High School affiliated with CHESSanity, an organization devoted to promote the playing of chess among school-aged children, reached out to Gamberg at Greenport Schools, the superintendent said.
After an exchange of emails, a donation of 24 chess sets and some guidebooks were sent to both Greenport and Southold Elementary Schools.
Since then, two chess clubs were formed, one in each school, and over the past few months, second and third graders in both districts have met for an hour each week to learn the game and hone their skills.
“The skills and dispositions learned by playing this game are invaluable as children start to think strategically and carefully,” Gamberg said.
Wang, of CHESSanity, said the goal was to provide the games to students at no cost to introduce chess to young minds, and to maintain the supply regularly. The organization has donated
chess sets to 20 schools in four school districts in Long Island so far.
“I hope that our little help can have some positive impact upon these children, improve their academic performance, and build their self-esteem,” he said.
Wang said since he and his brother, a college freshman, kicked of the non-profit organization CHESSanity, they have raised more than $35,000 by conducting chess classes every Friday night during the school years and organizing monthly competitive tournaments.
The funds raised have allowed them to give away the free chess sets to districts including Wyandanch, Roosevelt, and Hempstead, benefiting thousands of students.
There are many ways to inspire a love of learning and a desire to achieve one’s personal best. Chess is one of them.
I am reminded of I.S. 318, the New York City public school that has a championship chess team. It was featured in a wonderful film called Brooklyn Castle. You can find it and rent it online. Watch it if you can. It is an inspiring movie about the power of chess to change lives.
Kings pawn to kings bishop 3. Capture. Your move.
Those who know chess will recognize the danger in the move described above if they can read chess description and visualize the board. There is an interesting thing that goes on in math and in chess. Both are accompanied by a language that can be translated into a visual experience. In a similar vein, reading music can translate into an auditory experience.
Bob Sheperd is fond of pointing out how important a role to intellect and its development narrative plays. He is, of course, correct. Two other important intellectual developments come to mind. The first is the process described above in relation to chess. The other is the more physical judgement of distance and speed throwing objects trains a person to do. One of our most recent excellent students was also very proficient in fast pitch softball.
The more different activities we can develop as part of student lives, the better we will be.
I have always thought that in a perfect world the kids would have an hour a day of board-game playing all the way from preschool to graduation
What a difference it makes when we treat students as whole human beings and schooling as practice not for the test but for being a whole human being. Chess. Theatre. Music. Art. Philosophy. Doing History. Doing Science.
Tell the test mongers where they can put their tests. Take back your classrooms.
What is life for? It is for farting around, making things, and enjoying the hell out of one another. Anyone who tells you any different is confused. –A little riff on Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite phrase. Kurt, who is in heaven now
Met Kurt Vonnegut in the late 1990s at a conference titled “Working Without a Net,” with a subtitle about creativity. Vonnegut was grumpy, proud, and grateful to have an appreciative audience, especially in his home state of Indiana. He was eager for casual conversation with the audience. Other presenters were from theater (Karen Grassle), visionary architecture (Paolo Solari), and sculpture created without commissions and grants (Patricia Renick). The presenters were excellent. Karen Grassle was visibly shaking as she prepared to offer three different enactments one passage from Shakespeare. All presenters revealed their vulnerabilities and some of the weird and wonderful things about working in the arts.
I also bring this conference up because I just read a scholarly article about “the new Kindergarten.” The article included a draconian schedule with only 15 minutes of recess, more time on reading readiness than anything, science as writing steps for planting a seed. The article included examples of the posters in the room –“I can name coins and their attributes.” Another version of these statements, filled with academic jargon, were posted for adults in the room. The study seemed to take for granted that this SHOULD BE the new normal.
Horrifying. Thank you, Laura, for your work to counter this nonsense.
Laura: I can statements came into our vocabulary at some time indistinguishable during one of the rounds of top down reform. Your evaluation had to do with, among other things, whether your standards had been turned into I can statements. I had the impression that this came out of a place in Ohio, but I have forgotten where or who was making big money off this crap.
I bought about taking the logic of what I was saying toward another anti-testing polemic but demurred. Thank you for going this direction.
Of all the things that Ed reform has done to hurt education, i think this has been the most pernicious: the assumption that what is important is immediately observable and assessable. This is he assumption that undermines programs like the one above.
the assumption that what is important is immediately observable and assessable
Nailed it, Roy!
Dearest Dr. Ravitch:
Finally, your post like this one can eliminate all trolls in your educational blog. This brings fresh hope for many upcoming generations.
Those greedy parents and half wealth will stop shaking or moaning about poor but intelligent and well manner immigrant children.
Those arrogant talented teachers will opt to teach Public Education more than teach those stupid, disrespectful big mouth rich kids in private schools.
I do not talk nonsense, but rather from my own experience. In reality, would you see the majority of arrogant rich children really impolite to adults? Dump Tump is one example when he was kid. Back2basic
Sorry, it was typo. it is dumb not dump. However, the really dumb Tump dumps himself and his followers in trouble by selling the highest or finest weapon to Saudi Arabia, according to this article:
“Trump Allows High-Tech U.S. Bomb Parts to Be Built in Saudi Arabia”
By MICHAEL LaFORGIA and WALT BOGDANICH
Tucked into the administration’s emergency order to sell arms to Saudi Arabia is approval for Raytheon to build key components of precision-guided bombs with Saudi partners.