Educational Leadership

four moves ahead. Chess gives students the ability to make great decisions at crucial moments. A child who lives in a tough neighborhood has to make life-changing decisions every day in terms of what they do. They must always be aware of the friends they associate with or what streets to walk down at night, for example.

Learning chess can also give students intellectual capital. The students I taught to play chess started beating me, started beating the other teachers, and then all the kids wanted to play chess. They learned that smart is not something you are; it’s something you can become.

Chess is very mathematical. In my first teaching job, with middle school students, I started using chess to teach mathematics. Now I have 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders writing their chess moves in algebraic notation. Those children are very good thinkers. If we want to be innovative, we need to make sure there’s a chess program in every school in the world.

You’ve said discipline was the most
important thing you taught. How can we
provide discipline that makes a difference?

Discipline is a form of love. There are ways to discipline children with dignity that enable them to still feel good about themselves, to continue to be proud of their accomplishments, but also to understand that they’ve made a mistake and need to take responsibility.

Some students are not accustomed to discipline, so when you discipline them, they feel that’s not the norm. Their reactions can be violent or disrespectful. But that’s the only thing they know; their reaction is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. We have to be careful about how we deliver discipline because they may not be ready for it.

Once I had a student in my office with his mother. He was giving teachers problems, didn’t want to do homework and those kinds of things. Clearly, he didn’t show much respect in the way he was treating his mom, the way he was talking to her. I asked his mother if I could talk to the young man by himself.

I talked to him about my own life growing up
with a single mom and how sometimes we can forget
how lucky we are to have people in our lives. We
get upset about the people who are not there. I could
see this boy was upset that his father wasn’t there
for him—and later he confirmed that. I told him,
“Think about the people who are there for you.”
This was a kid who would play basketball with me
and other teachers in the evening. If we had events
on the weekend, we would invite him and help him
get there. So I said, “I don’t think it’s fair that you
treat your mom in that way and then we take you
to these events and give you special treatment. Your
parent is very important.”
He was homeless, so I had to be very careful and
loving about the way I presented it to him. But I
knew this was going to be one of my only shots to
send a message to this young man, because if it’s his
mom today, would it be his college professor soon,
or someone who says, “Hey, you’re going to lose
your scholarship”? I didn’t want him to become an
adult—a professional—and then lose whatever he
had because of the way he treated people.

And the young man responded to the call to be a better person. He became more respectful in school and at home. His mother saw tremendous change, even in the way he helped out with the family, being the oldest. He sort of became the father who wasn’t there.