In 2013, Dr. Alan M. Kirshner wrote about International Games Day @ your library. His volunteers played blitz chess, separately taught beginners and more advanced players, gave a simultaneous exhibition, and projected chess movies. Chess attracted 120 Fremont, CA library patrons.
If your local library will attract fewer chess-interested patrons, you can be a lone chess volunteer. This article provides four ideas for you to promote chess all by yourself at International Games Day @ your library.
1) Start early. September 11 was the deadline for librarians to request free games by registering for the November 21, 2015 International Games Day. The companies Good Games, Konami, Looney Labs, Steve Jackson Games, USAopoly, Yummy Yummy Tummy, and Asmodee donated games to participating libraries. Your mentioning this chance to build a collection of games will endear you to your local librarian. Then you can ask your librarian for chess to be a part of International Games Day.
2) Get supplies. Since I was the only chess volunteer at the Denton (TX) Public Library, North Branch, for International Games Day, I planned just two activities, playing chess and solving checkmate puzzles. For playing chess, Public Services Librarians Dana M. Tucker and Kerol S. Harrod supplied chess sets and boards. Since the North Branch Library hosts a chess club every Monday evening, the sets and boards were already stored at the library.
For solving checkmate puzzles, I provided four levels of puzzle sheets. (Dana and Kerol offered to photocopy for me, but I had photocopies available in my own chess teaching supplies.) The Novice puzzle sheet had Boden’s checkmates (downloaded from KidChess.com). Those puzzles had only a few chessmen on each diagram. Intermediate puzzles, from KidChess.com, were also checkmate-in-one move, but with more chessmen on each diagram. The Novice and Intermediate puzzle sheets had four diagrams to a sheet. For the Advanced level sheet, I chose leftover assessments from the UT Dallas Chess Camp. That six-puzzle sheet had two checkmate-in-one move and four checkmate-in-two move diagrams. For the Expert level, I created six puzzles from famous games (such as the Immortal Game) which were checkmates in two or three moves.
3) Have a procedure. When patrons played each other chess, they called me over to their games to answer questions: “Can each pawn move two squares on its first move, or only the first pawn that moves in a game?” “Can I promote to a queen if I already have a queen on the board?” “How do I castle?” To be available to answer questions, I avoided playing chess myself. For example, when a complete beginner came into the room, I asked a senior citizen to teach that beginner instead of my teaching him. That senior citizen had been telling me about how many years he had played, so I thought that he probably knew the rules. The older man relished the chance to teach. The senior citizen even gave the beginner, a middle-aged adult man, his business card and said that he would be happy to play chess with him again.
After library patrons played chess with each other, some were interested in the chess puzzle sheets. They answered by drawing arrows on the diagrams rather than using notation. Patrons put their names and phone numbers on one of their puzzle sheets to be entered in the drawing for a prize.
The prizes were four chess T-shirts and three chess medals, leftovers from the UT Dallas Chess Camp. One entry (puzzle sheet) per person was allowed, even if the person completed all four sheets. Throughout the afternoon, I tracked on the dry erase board (using first names and last initials) results on the four levels of puzzles (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert). One could look at the board and say, for example, “Hey, Kerol H. got 4 of 4 right on the Novice puzzles!” Or, “Dana T. got 3 out of 4 correct on the Intermediate puzzles!” Getting puzzles right did not affect one’s chances in the prize drawing. But some people like to see their names on the dry erase board (like a "top score" tracker on a video game). After patrons turned in their puzzle sheets, I pointed out which answers were right and wrong. Most patrons wanted to try again on the puzzles that they had missed.
Toward the end of International Games Day, which ran from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. at my library, I handed out the prizes. Had I not been able to find the winners still at the library, Dana and Kerol would have used the phone numbers on the puzzle sheets to contact the patrons to claim their prizes.
4) Share chess opportunities and books. Through volunteering, I promoted local chess resources. When patrons asked, “Where can I play chess again?” I mentioned the Monday night Denton Public Library chess club, the Barnes & Noble club in Lewisville (about 16 miles away), and the Dallas Chess Club (a one-hour drive). After parents saw the prizes from the UT Dallas Chess Camp, they asked me for information about chess camps. In addition to UT Dallas, Coppell Gifted Association, Greenhill School (Addison), McKinney Chess, and SCA Chess (Fort Worth) offer chess camps within a one-hour drive from Denton, TX.
As appropriate in a library setting, I talked about chess books and films. One father mentioned that his ten-year-old homeschooled son had learned chess from a book with a “Gary” in it. I asked, “Garry Kasparov?” The father said no, the book was Gary’s Adventures in Chess Country. I mentioned that my sixth book, Thinking With Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14, was from the same publisher (Mongoose Press). The older man had seen the film Searching for Bobby Fischer and wanted to know what Josh Waitzkin did now. So I gave him the name of Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning. A mother of a fourth grader later mentioned the same film. I told her that, in the film, actor Ben Kingsley portrayed chess teacher Bruce Pandolfini. I recommended Pandolfini books such as Beginning Chess for her son. I told her about Brooklyn Castle, a documentary film about middle school children and chess, available for check out at the Denton Public Library.
Around 4:30 p.m., when no one had visited the chess room during the previous five minutes, I began packing up the chess sets and boards. Then a young man with a red beard walked in. I asked him if he wanted to try chess puzzles or if he wanted to play me a game of chess. He said, “Don’t you remember me? I was in your Strickland Middle School chess class.” Once he said his name (Andrew G.), I remembered him. Andrew didn’t have a beard eight years ago! Andrew and I played three games. I was pleased that Andrew remembered much of what I had taught him, such as developing his chessmen and castling. He said that he still plays chess, usually via computer. I was glad that my volunteering at Strickland led Andrew to make chess a part of his life. Perhaps I will encounter the library patrons I met on November 21, 2015 years from now, still playing chess.
Dr. Alexey Root teaches online courses on using chess for educational purposes. More information about her, and about the courses, is at http://www.utdallas.edu/is/faculty-staff/alexey-root/
Categories
Archives
- November 2024 (18)
- October 2024 (35)
- September 2024 (23)
- August 2024 (27)
- July 2024 (44)
- June 2024 (27)
- May 2024 (32)
- April 2024 (51)
- March 2024 (34)
- February 2024 (25)
- January 2024 (26)
- December 2023 (29)
- November 2023 (26)
- October 2023 (37)
- September 2023 (27)
- August 2023 (37)
- July 2023 (47)
- June 2023 (33)
- May 2023 (37)
- April 2023 (45)
- March 2023 (37)
- February 2023 (28)
- January 2023 (31)
- December 2022 (23)
- November 2022 (32)
- October 2022 (31)
- September 2022 (19)
- August 2022 (39)
- July 2022 (32)
- June 2022 (35)
- May 2022 (21)
- April 2022 (31)
- March 2022 (33)
- February 2022 (21)
- January 2022 (27)
- December 2021 (36)
- November 2021 (34)
- October 2021 (25)
- September 2021 (25)
- August 2021 (41)
- July 2021 (36)
- June 2021 (29)
- May 2021 (29)
- April 2021 (31)
- March 2021 (33)
- February 2021 (28)
- January 2021 (29)
- December 2020 (38)
- November 2020 (40)
- October 2020 (41)
- September 2020 (35)
- August 2020 (38)
- July 2020 (36)
- June 2020 (46)
- May 2020 (42)
- April 2020 (37)
- March 2020 (60)
- February 2020 (38)
- January 2020 (45)
- December 2019 (35)
- November 2019 (35)
- October 2019 (42)
- September 2019 (45)
- August 2019 (56)
- July 2019 (44)
- June 2019 (35)
- May 2019 (40)
- April 2019 (48)
- March 2019 (61)
- February 2019 (39)
- January 2019 (30)
- December 2018 (29)
- November 2018 (51)
- October 2018 (45)
- September 2018 (29)
- August 2018 (49)
- July 2018 (35)
- June 2018 (31)
- May 2018 (39)
- April 2018 (31)
- March 2018 (26)
- February 2018 (33)
- January 2018 (30)
- December 2017 (26)
- November 2017 (24)
- October 2017 (30)
- September 2017 (30)
- August 2017 (31)
- July 2017 (28)
- June 2017 (32)
- May 2017 (26)
- April 2017 (37)
- March 2017 (28)
- February 2017 (30)
- January 2017 (27)
- December 2016 (29)
- November 2016 (24)
- October 2016 (32)
- September 2016 (31)
- August 2016 (27)
- July 2016 (24)
- June 2016 (26)
- May 2016 (19)
- April 2016 (30)
- March 2016 (36)
- February 2016 (28)
- January 2016 (32)
- December 2015 (26)
- November 2015 (23)
- October 2015 (16)
- September 2015 (28)
- August 2015 (28)
- July 2015 (6)
- June 2015 (1)
- May 2015 (2)
- April 2015 (1)
- February 2015 (3)
- January 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- October 1991 (1)
- August 1989 (1)
- January 1988 (1)
- December 1983 (1)