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Starting A Chess Club At School,
How A Parent Who Barely Played Chess Did It
My son enjoyed his K-4 elementary school chess club and won the overall
school championship in the 3rd and 4th grades. He was really looking forward to
playing the chess club champions from the other two K-4 public schools in town
at the upper elementary chess club. Then, early in the summer break, we learned
the bad news. The upper elementary school had no chess club for the 650 fifth
and sixth graders in our town to experience the
benefits of chess. I spoke with the school principal and learned of
all the budget cuts, expanded teacher responsibilities, much larger class sizes,
loss of nearly all custodial staff, program cuts of nearly everything beyond the
basics, etc. The possibility of the school starting a new chess club sounded
bleak.
Afterward I wondered, "could a parent with no expertise in chess start a
chess club at an upper elementary school???" After all, I'm barely a good
match for my 10 year old son! As it turns out, there were some helpful web sites
indicating, this is indeed possible! But, how? A couple of the sites even
provided general descriptions of the process of starting a scholastic chess
club. However, none gave a good detailed blow-by-blow description of the process
with actual requirements, all the necessary documents and materials to pull it
off. I needed a scholastic chess club start-up do-it-yourself kit for
dummies. But, none existed. This was starting to look a bit difficult.
(don't worry, it's going to be a lot easier for you)
It was hard to put the idea of starting a chess club aside, in spite of my
ignorance on the subject. After all, my son and a lot of other kids stood to
benefit a lot from the effort. Fortunately, I had some experience with an
attempt to start a service club at the high school, which unfortunately died
from inadequate student interest. It seemed that several of the lessons learned
from the process used in that effort could be applied to the formation of a
chess club at the upper elementary. Maybe there would be enough interest among
the kids to succeed this time. After all, there will be about 10% in the school
that were in their elementary school chess club. After considerable pondering,
the idea kept sounding better and better. (actually, most of the kids in the
new club weren't in one before)
It was still only mid way through summer break. So, I decided to pursue the
idea further. The first step was to see what the school Principal thought of a
parent organizing a chess club in his school. Fortunately, he was very positive
about the (still somewhat vague) proposal. Since the two grades have lunch /
recess at different times, the chess club would have to be an after school
program. Also, a faculty sponsor was going to be required to meet the school
district requirements. If I was willing to organize this, he offered to recruit
a faculty sponsor for this new academic club. However, they were going to have
to volunteer their time after school. Hopefully, this would not be a show
stopper. Being an incurable optimist, I didn't worry about it. Instead, it was
time to figure out how to start a scholastic chess club.
(scholastic chess
clubs are best started at school in the first half of the year, but can be
started just about anytime elsewhere as a community after-school-program)
The USCF (US Chess Federation) was definitely
the most helpful source of information about starting a new scholastic chess
club. Their web site includes a complete section on
Scholastic Chess Resources. The
most helpful of these resources was
A
Guide to Scholastic Chess, which I continue to refer back to often.
Also, they'll mail you a USCF chess club affiliation packet by simply requesting
one from Club Development at 845-562-8350, ext. 128. This includes a hard
copy of A Guide to Scholastic Chess, plus several other very helpful
publications. The USCF also has a section for
chess beginners, which had some
good materials to help me learn more about chess and provide to the beginners in
the chess club.
The Rockford, IL Chess Club also has a nice web page about
Starting a scholastic
chess club. The Ohio Scholastic Chess Association also has a nice page about
Starting A Scholastic Chess
Program. These and the USCF information helped to understand more about
starting a new scholastic chess club. However,
I also wanted to speak to some real live people who had done this before. So,
I went to the USCF's on-line
National
Directory of Scholastic Chess Coordinators and contacted the one from my
state. As it turns out, he was not located nearby, and gave me the names of some
more closely located scholastic chess club organizers and coaches. For those of
you in Oklahoma, this information is available on this website's list of
Oklahoma Scholastic Chess Clubs. You can also contact
the officers of OSCO for advice. I spoke to several of
the nearby scholastic club organizers and learned from each, from a few different perspectives. Now the
information was starting to pile up quite nicely (and it's all going to be
presented to you in an orderly fashion on this website).
Some of the information was starting to point toward a more specific
objective than my first vague concept of simply having a club where the kids
could play. If you want to achieve a goal, you need a vision of what it will
look like when you get there. Then, it's best to clearly share that vision with
everyone who can help you achieve it, so that you have a better chance for
success and someone to enjoy it with. Here was our vision that ultimately
developed for our new scholastic chess club:
- Provide a regularly scheduled opportunity for the kids to play chess in a
positive environment
(a weekly after school program in the school cafeteria for us)
- Teach social skills through good sportsmanship, including conflict
resolution through rules and official rulings
(just like laws and courts or arbitration)
- Facilitate development of the members' chess skills
(you don't need to be an expert to facilitate)
- Prepare for interscholastic chess tournament competition as a team
(just like athletics, but for the mind)
- Most importantly, HAVE FUN!
(because that's really why the kids want to do this)
There were still a lot of details to sort out and materials to prepare.
Remembering one of my favorite sayings, "nobody plans to fail, they just fail to
plan", I began to prepare a detailed plan and budget. In the interest of keeping
this page a manageable length, these are presented on separate linked pages
along with all the supporting documents prepared to execute them. You're welcome
to use and modify all of this as you desire to help get your scholastic program
going. Be sure to check out the results below before
jumping to the plan and budget links.
 At our town's central upper elementary school of about 650
fifth and sixth graders, we now have a chess club that started in September with
47 members. Nearly all of them signed up in the first couple of meetings. Only 8 have stopped attending
after 6 months. We had a couple of
kids arguing about moves the first couple of meetings. However, the kids
mastered the rules and rulings approach quickly and are not bashful about
putting up their hand for a ruling, just like in a rated tournament. They've
done great in their sportsmanship development. Each week, every member's first
game a tournament round with assigned opponent, table and color from a pairing
chart, with a few tournament clocks, preparing them for official USCF rated tournaments. Then, they play whoever they
want for fun, and/or take advantage of frequent training opportunities.
 We only had two members go to
the first USCF rated interscholastic tournament a few weeks after school began,
and they placed 9th and 10th out of 22 in their section. Two months later, we
had 10 members sign up for another nearby rated scholastic chess tournament,
enough to be there as a school team in the K-6 Under-750 (USCF rating) section.
They brought home the 2nd place trophy for the school!!!
 Some of our team
members saw the team shirts of the other schools and came up with a sketch for a
shirt of our own, and a parent offered to buy the team shirts! The school-wide
PA announcement at school the next day about their achievement had the whole
school buzzing.
At the third rated tournament, which was further away, we had a team of
eight. They again took home a team second, along with individual 1st, 2nd and
6th place awards!! The fourth rated tournament had 13 team participants who
earned a 3rd place trophy for the school.
The scholastic chess year builds up to the Oklahoma State Scholastic Chess
Championship Tournament. Our school team had 18 participants, almost half the
active chess club members, at this tournament. At the end of the day, they took
home a big 2nd place trophy for the school and were on top of the world.
 Chess boards now appear at
lunch and draw a crowd. There's a lot of excitement at school
about this sport for the mind. The kids are looking forward to the next USCF
rated tournament. The parents, organizers and school faculty are all proud. The
town has even expressed an interest in chess as an after school program to be
available at the new community center that's under construction.
As the year has gone along, the Principal and Teachers have commented about some
significant improvements in some chess club members, both academically and
socially. They have something to be a part of, and proud of, and a
lot of good kids as new friends to do it with. Some of them have also become
closer to parents or siblings as a result of chess, with obvious positive impact
on them and their family. It's really
wonderful to see what can happen when you give kids the opportunity to play chess.
It looks like the things published about the
benefits of scholastic chess are really true!
Caution: chess with kids is contagious!! The
club's Faculty Sponsor has gone from learning how the pieces move to holding her
own against some of the other beginners and providing rulings. The club's
Organizer has been studying the game to be a reasonable match for his son and
actually getting enough skill to be dangerous (but not generally to others). He
recently got his own USCF membership and had the (very
humbling) experience of playing in a tournament (with adults). Several of the
parents are now spending more quality time playing with their kids, including
chess. THIS IS REALLY GREAT!!!
Updated 25 September 2004
Visitors Since 23 October 2004
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