Chess Club

Of all the surprises in my life and career, becoming a chess club sponsor would have to be near the top. Growing up I never had any interest in games that would stimulate my mind intellectually, unless it were a video game. A friend of mine retaught me how to play a few years back, and I got hooked. We had weekly matches before he moved away. I think I lost all but two of them. I'm still terrible at it, but I try to approcach life as a game of chess, anticipating moves, averting disaster, protecting the king, so on and so forth . . .

In 2014 when I was still teaching middle school I decided why not start a club? In retrospect, I was probably already too bogged down, but we hadn't had a chess club in many years, and I felt (and still feel) that it is an important thing for any school to offer. I didn't do it for the purpose of scoring brownie points with the administration, although I knew it would be something that could not be overlooked come review time. I did it because there were many students who needed a positive extra curricular opportunity and a new way to make friends.

I proposed this idea to my principal and she agreed to fund twenty new chess sets. To my surprise there were dozens of students interested in joining my newly created club. I think we peaked at around forty students out of a population of about 1,000. We gathered in the library on Thursdays after school. A couple other teachers joined not only to fulfill their mandatory service hours, but also because they enjoyed chess and wanted to share that with our students. When I quit that job, I left the club in good hands with them.

Fast forward to the beginning of my time as a teacher at Herron. I was shocked to find out that there was no chess club at this school either. All teachers are required to provide some sort of extra curricular opportunity, but my department chair said that being a long term sub, I wasn't expected to do this, but I did it anyway. I submitted a couple of announcements and at first I thought I was only going to have five or six members. But on the day of our first meeting 17 showed up!

We took the first meeting outside in the front lawn area in front of Russell Hall, known colloquially as the Museum building. The weather was absolutely perfect. Assistant Head of School, Mr. Gilchrist even poked his head out, shook my hand and congratulated me for putting this together so quickly.