PHOTO: ADRIANA LOPEZ SANFELIU
Chmielewski, James A. Black, Jr., Brian Arthur, Isaac Barayev, Tommy Zhang, Carlos Tapia
Wen, Kevin Marin, Anita Maksimiuk, Justus Williams, Elizabeth Spiegel, John Galvin
dle school experience.
Kids who catch the bug continue with
chess as an elective and after school club,
possibly seeing GM Miron Sher once a
week. Some of these students will take
Spiegel’s class every day. Their classes
become less traditional and more like a
teacher-led study group: On a recent
Monday, Spiegel taught students playing the Colle-Zukertort opening a 15
minute lesson before they reviewed the
material by playing through a ChessBase
file. Kids playing the Caro-Kann worked
independently, sparring and answering
questions she had prepared, before meeting with her to discuss their findings.
The three strongest players in the class,
all rated over 2100, played blitz in the
back of the room, while a group of nontournament players played Game/20.
Differentiated instruction is taken very
seriously: In the run-up to nationals,
uschess.org
there were times when no two kids were
studying the exact same thing.
Each Saturday, students compete in a
Game/30 tournament run by Chess In
The Schools. These tournaments take
place in public schools around New York
City, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Registration
is free, and kids have their games analyzed by Spiegel or IM Farai Mandizha,
assigned to the team by Chess In the
Schools. The analysis is intense, frequently uplifting, occasionally painful.
Deep calculation or focused planning
receives hard-won praise; lack of basic
opening knowledge is criticized. Opening
instruction is an essential part of
Spiegel’s curriculum. “Teach a kid the
Colle, even better, the Colle-Zuckertort,
give them a plan to play for, and they will
learn how to make and carry out a plan.
They will get the same type of positions
and structures, so they will be able to use
their experience from past games and
post-mortems to orient themselves in
the future.” (excerpted from Spiegel’s
blog at lizzyknowsall.blogspot.com).
The combination of elective chess
classes, Saturday tournaments, and the
after school club has proven exceptionally fruitful. This model won its successes
with class A and B players, kids whose
main chess influence was their schoolteacher. But the last few years have been
slightly different. In 2009, three unusual
students were part of the entering sixth
grade class: Justus Williams, James
Black, and Isaac Barayev. By eighth
grade, these three had raised the bar for
what their program could accomplish.
A glance at the school’s rating list tells the
story: Each one outrates their expert
teacher, Justus and James by hundreds
of points. Each has a serious study program outside of school: Justus is a
Chess Life — July 2012
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