My mentor held one of his bigger classes full of little
kids, and I was there to help set up, clean up, and watch how the kids interacted.
Setting up was easy- take a few chess boards and set them up neatly in rows;
rearrange the tables and chairs so that there is room to sit for all of the
kids and the parents; set up a projector (I’ll get to that in a few sentences).
Now, I wasn’t allowed to teach (probably because the kid’s parents paid for an
actual chess master to teach haha) but I actually did have a great time
watching the kids interact. Of course, the kids are kids, so they are their energetic
little selves talking all of the time. But what surprised me was that they
really got into chess and focus when they needed to be. Anyways, one of most
fun thing to watch was when they used the projector. My mentor already has two
of his chess books translated to his computer (I’m on his 3rd book),
and he used a part of them to put chess puzzles on a big screen using the
projector. The kids would look at the chess puzzles and raise their hand when
they got the answer. Whoever gets it right first receives points (though I don’t
know if there is a prize or not), providing competition between the kids. This
experience was great for a few reasons: 1) I got to do the chess puzzles along
with the kids and silently compete with them (I’m glad to say that I solved
most of them before them, but there were a few where I failed miserably) and 2)
I got to see what my product will potentially achieve. Cleaning up was also
easy- put the chairs back in a stack; move the tables around so that they aren’t
in the way of doors; put away the projector. All in all, a great lesson.
GLHF,
Anthony
No comments:
Post a Comment