Chess for Educators

How to organize and promote a meaningful chess education program.

Chess has the rare quality that children love it even though it's good for them. Playing chess is like life: you have to plan, make decisions, be creative, deal with challenges, deal with disappointments, interact with others, and evaluate your actions.

In this guide, psychologist and chess teacher Karel van Delft provides access to the underlying scientific research and presents the best teaching methods. Van Delft has created a set of reliable tools for teachers and school chess organisers.

What can teachers do to improve their instruction? How (in) important is talent? How do you support a special needs group? How do you deal with parents? What are the best selling points of a chess program? Boys and girls, what's the difference? How are "school chess" programs doing in different countries?

This is not a book about chess rules and moves, but it points the way to where you can find good chess technical improvement content. Van Delft offers a wealth of practical advice on the most effective didactics for children to develop life-critical skills through learning chess.

Karel van Delft is a Dutch chess teacher and chess organizer. He has a Master's degree in Psychology from the University of Amsterdam and has lectured and published widely on the topic of the benefits of chess in education.

"Over 260 pages of pure motivation and inspiration. While other school chess books focus on concrete lessons, Karel van Delft provides information on everything else that should be in the chess teacher's backpack (chess and autism, chess and girls, chess as a social and therapeutic tool, the role of parents...). The author achieves a wonderful balance between practical advice and scientific foundation. You can use some pages as a checklist, on the other hand, references to scientific papers can make any school principal realize that chess really belongs in the classroom. And isn't that exactly what we need to spread chess in schools?" - This is Philippe Vukojevic, newsletter from First Rank, ECU Education