Challenges in teaching chess to children

I have been teaching chess in rural areas around Udaipur for a while now. Between two villages I have regular 22 students. Most of these kids like chess although some did enlist in my chess classes more out of curiosity or simply to avoid other studies. I have made chess a privileged game within Badgao and Havala communities.

My first couple weeks of teaching was a complete disaster. Nobody listened. Classes were big. Kids were simply unmanageable. They could not understand most of what I was teaching. As the time went by I realized many common things going on between two of my village classes.

When I finally "hit the wall" with teaching chess I realized I would need help of someone who is a Hindi speaker as well as a great and patient teacher. I turned to Samvit, the founder of DAAN schools. Sam immediately took over my chaotically disorganized chess classes and started putting things in order. He took the same concepts I was trying to teach for days and presented it in a very efficient clear manner. I learnt a lot from him. He is also great at disciplining kids. With Sam's help things started to get better.

When chess classes in Badgaon center have become more or less organized and kids started making progress Sam insisted that we start the same activities in Havala educational center. At first I was dreading same crazy chaotic experience but then after what Sam did in Badgao center I thought it would be okay. Havala kids were surprisingly different from Badgao children. They were sharper and faster at learning. Also the group we selected for chess was a lot smaller and more manageable. We didn't have second demonstration board so we have to start each lesson by sitting in a circle and looking at one board.

With time I made everybody talk through each move and understand why we are agreeing on that move.

After a while I established the same routine at Havala as at Badgao. 10 min of repetition of previous lecture, 10 min of new lecture and a lot of time for "insane" gaming.

More and more kids started getting interested in chess in both villages. Senior children at Havala would sit every day and wait for their chess class impatiently at front of the school. Some started asking me whether they can take chess sets home and practice there. I had to say no. We would never see these sets again if this was to happen I bet.

I noticed more and more girls started taking interest in chess in Havala village while more boys were interested in chess in Badgaon village.

Badgaon center still remains my main focus. I now have four outstanding students. Surprisingly 3 of them belong to the same family. Girl name Preity, her brother Ashish, her cousin Uttam and one boy from rocky hills settlement - Pushkar. Pushkar and his family (total of 5) live in shanty Badgaon hill village in a house made of mud and paper. They are extremely poor but all kids seem to have very good values and extremely humble. His younger 6-year old brother Karan is now showing a very vivid interest in chess practically begging me to teach him. He watches his brother Pushkar play with Ashish and feels left out.

On the picture below you can see my four favorite students on whom I have started to focus individually. All love chess and come to the educational village center mainly to learn how to play in addition to simple English and math classes.

Preity is playing with her cousin Uttam. Boy next to me is Pushkar playing Ashish.

Ashish has become my personal "shadow". I think I am his favorite teacher. I think he only started taking interest in chess because I like it. I wonder what would he say if I have a change of heart from chess to checkers. Would he immediately quit it too and switch to checkers? ;)

Ashish cannot stand to see his sister Preity lose, so most of the time he plays both boards. One for him and one for Preity. On the picture below Ashish is consulting his cousin Uttam on how to make a bad move so that Preity wins :)

What I have learnt from my extremely unusual experience teaching chess in rural Rajasthani villages? A ton of things. I would divide it all into two categories: how to organize and how to teach.

In terms of organizational stuff;

1) it's important to maintain discipline

If discipline is not maintained the class would drive you crazy. You would have 10-14 screaming children all at once and all for various reasons. You would get one big painful headache and most likely nothing will be taught or learnt. Discipline involves sitting straight, listening, raising hands to answer etc.


2) it's important to maintain a routine

Routine should be something like 10 min beginning of each class to revise what they learnt before. I would revise name of each piece (example: white rook, black pawn etc), how pieces move, what is check, what is the purpose of chess etc. Another 10 min should be spent on new material. Could be learning how to castle, how not to move the king into check, good squares and dangerous squares. Also could be spent on teaching to work with just 2-4 pieces. For example, king against king and queen.


3) it's very important to focus on few students

I noticed it's a huge hassle trying to focus on large group of kids. Nobody really can learn anything. Kids distract each other by talking. Also it gets very hectic to the point where you simply feel torn apart between bunch of screaming kids. Every board wants attention. Teaching two boards at a time proved more effective although it does have side effects. Other kids feel left out etc.

In terms of teaching rules of chess I encountered some major obstacles:


1) kids forget which pieces are theirs and start moving opponent's pawns for example

2) it was hard for them to remember that pawn takes diagonally but marches straight. They thought it can march diagonally as well

3) kids did not understand why you cannot kill the king

4) kids did not understand that the check should to be addressed. Instead after one says "check" the other moves some other piece not-related to the check

5) kids moved knight to the wrong square

6) they would forget the difference between king and queen and start moving king many squares instead of one

7) they would always move into the check

8) they did not understand the concept of stalemate

9) they would forget that pieces other than knight cannot jump over other
pieces

10) They would very often move pawn to the left and right instead of straight. Sometimes even one square back.


In spite of what seemed to be an impossible task things started slowly to get better. Kids started getting used to seeing the same things over and over again. They started to become cautious. They still have many rules to learn (en passant, how to castle correctly, stalemate etc) but I know they will do fine. For a long time I thought I will not be able to teach them anything at all but now looking at Vivek from Havala village or Ashish from Badgao I know I can! Just takes a lot of time, that's all.

Tomorrow I will visit an old Indian master who teaches chess to advanced FIDE rated kids in Udaipur. I will ask him for some help. Perhaps one of his students could visit at least one of our centers occasionally to continue teaching the kids. Not sure if this is possible. But I should ask anyways.

My chess task is accomplished. I have presented the game of chess into the rural communities as the game of privilege requiring patience, good memory and intelligence. Not sure where it's going to go from there as I am leaving the country very soon. I hope they will remember me wherever the life takes them especially if one day they will play chess somewhere when they are older.

Seniors and juniors

Yesterday I took three more pictures of the rocky settlement before meeting with kids and Sorab (the other teacher).

We finally separated the group into two: seniors and juniors. I would be teaching seniors and Sorab will be teaching juniors (5 to 10 years old). We will unite two groups at the beginning of each day and at the end of each day. Half of the day the groups will study separately.

I started teaching seniors English and chess. English is necessary. Chess hmmmmm not really but I want to try.
For a good part of my teaching I tried to teach them that the end of the verbs will differ for "I", "he" or "she". It was tough. Finally it looked like they were slowly getting it. Then we started chess class. It was almost impossible. Every time I teach chess I realize I am failing. We replayed the pawn game with introduction of the king. Now the "purpose" of the game is to make a queen with 8 pawns and help of the king. My class grew to be 10 kids (or 5 boards). They were yelling, doing crazy moves with pawns and basically uncontrollable.

I don't know what to do at this point but take a deep breath and be patient. I know I can get it to them. Just need a lot and a lot of time.

When we united two groups we played a shake-shake game where each student shakes the bottle to imitate teachers movement. The student who does not imitate the exact way the bottle is held is eliminated. It sounds boring but it was a lot of fun actually.

One thing worries me that new children from the rocky hill settlement did not get the game. It's possible that they used to beg on the streets before. Every time I distributed the candy to shake-shake game winners they would line up and beg me to give some to them as well. I don't think they understand they need to deserve the prize somehow. Perhaps today they will watch others and understand.

We finished with usual prayer. As you can see we are getting many senior level kids (they sit at the back).

Convincing villagers from the rocky hills worked!

Our yesterday's adventure of going from house to house on those rocky hills worked. Today we were surprised to see a large number of kids in the class. Most families from the shanty house community sent their kids to DAAN school. Many were new. We had to redesign the daily class routine on a spot to incorporate new children. I noticed couple older guys. One very tall fellow looked about 18 years old. He was so tall that he reached the ceiling of our little "classroom" every time he got up to answer a question. Looks like he has good memory. He was getting things fast. His name is Ravi.

Most kids on the picture above came from rocky hills settlement. I now know the living conditions they come from. I look at them almost different. Some came very sick. Two kids were coughing and it looked like it was some kind of flew perhaps. When we asked older brother (also new guy in the class) about his sister being very sick and coughing in class he told us not to worry. Hmmm..

Some kids were dressed in school uniform and looked very professional. Some were covered in dirt wearing dirty dresses and pants. I also examined their hair. It looked like it was not washed for a while. Two older boys (about 18 perhaps) sat in the back. I could see they felt a little bit out of place here. They looked bored. I remembered them from yesterday's adventure. They come from the hills.

Mukesh, is the little boy whose younger sister fell asleep in class. She was too small for school. It was touchy to see him protecting and comforting her in her sleep. Very sweet.

We started with UNO, the game which became so popular lately. The kids simply love it. They learnt it very fast and now even utilizing some major strategies such as holding the best cards for later. I make them all practice numbers and colors by saying it out loud. It works even for the very shy kids.

For smaller kids we practice snake game there they have construct different shapes which make sense.

Chess....... What can I say. It's not easy. My chess class is going terrible. After trying to explain so many times so many things I kept failing. So I decided be as simple and entertaining. After 20 min of useless chess instruction I realized that my students are so bored and clueless that something needs to be done ASAP. So I decided to just play the pawn game. With 8 pawns on the board the winner is the one who promotes to the queen. No king involved for now. It's too difficult.

I noticed Ravi, the tallest kid from the hills, was almost sleeping when the pawn game was introduced. He suddenly got all lightened up and interested. Kids became active because it was simple.

Other formal instruction such as queen/king mate did not make much sense to them. At least not at this point of the development.

In addition to games Sorab decided to spent a good hour teaching kids some English through the story from children's book. They seem to learn from those stories although I am not fully convinced about this technique. I think it's better to introduce as fewer words as possible and then slowly progress and increase number of new words. Sorab also did the exercise of telling time and practicing numbers while I was busy with the chess class.

Finally time to go home. Mohit and Anniket on a motorcycle. They are both cousins of Sorab, the 20-year old teacher. They do not live in shanty house community on the hills. Sorab's brother came to pick them up. I wonder if they got into DAAN school because of Sorab himself. He enjoys teaching children. They help me a lot to calm other kids down when things get out of control. And I need all the help I can get.

Understanding the village

Today the highlights of the day included teaching kids chess, teaching them how to tell time and going into the village after school.

I realize that I am almost failing at teaching them chess. At times it seems impossible. I remembered advice of my own chess teacher, national master Bruce Baker "just let them play." He is right. To maintain the interest in the game the only thing that works is actually letting them play. It doesn't really matter that they don't know the rules. As long as they are interested in learning. Today I miserably failed at teaching to work the queen on the board. Children did not understand the exercise. They could not follow me. It was a battle I lost. I gave up after 30 minutes of intense trying to explain how the queen is the most powerful piece. They seem to move the queen in every possible direction. I don't think they understand me. I felt hopeless. Finally I told them to just play. It does not matter how. Just play. They suddenly got all lightened up and started playing some game I don't even know. The pawns were moving 4 squares up and the queen moved from any square to any square.

After a hard hour of trying to teach chess I decided to stop for today and study how to tell time. We have been doing time related exercises for a while now and kids are slowly getting it. Sorab was helping me. He speaks Hindi to them and yells sometimes in Hindi to calm them down. Time exercise went successful overall. We made each kid stand up and ask the other kid a time related question like "what time do you brush your teeth?". Then the other kid had to show on the paper clock the time and the first kid would repeat the full answer like "Ashish brushes his teeth at 9 o'clock".

We wrapped up the lessons with the daily prayer around 2:50 pm and headed into the village to talk to each family to find out why they stopped sending their children to DAAN school. Lately the number of students has dropped significantly. The villagers on the hills stopped sending them down to school. We wanted to know what's going on.

Manju, s 16-year-old from our school, has agreed to be our guide into the village. Sorab, the 20 year old Indian volunteer from local community, and me would go from door to door and meet the families.

It was shocking to see the poverty and conditions the villagers lived on the rocky hills. Most houses were either made of brick, mud, paper or plastic or some kind of combination of any of these. Some "houses" were very small. It was hard to imagine the family of 4 fitting in such a tight place.

The first house was a family of 5. The eldest daughter (of about 13-14 years old) stopped attending classes. When we asked why? The mother answered "she is married now, no need for her to go to school". The girl in pink on the picture below is that girl. I remember seeing her before in class.

Manju kept leading us into the rocky hills where we discovered many other families whose kids I immediately recognized. On the picture below Manju is walking ahead. Manju, by the way, is also married but still attends classes daily.

The next family was very friendly. Their lovely son Karan was always active in classes. I recognized him right away. The family of 5 lives in a tiny clay/plastic house. Karan looks so much like his dad. He is the shortest one on the picture below.

Looking down from the hill into Karan's house covered by blue plastic and stones I couldn't help but compare the newer high rises the Udapurians are building in the valleys between the hills. Such a drastic contrast. The tiny house made of plastic and clay vs the 10 floor high rise with garage.

We met few other families. Some said they don't want to send kids down to DAAN because there have been many fights between the kids of different settlements. Maybe fights between those who live in paper/plastic houses and newer settlements? Not sure.

It was hot to climb around the hills. It was an awakening experience.