Chess programs help pupils with discipline, memory, math skills
By Dylan Loeb McClain New York Times News Service Published
October 13, 2005 Donna Boyer looked tentatively at the board in
front of her, then reached out and pushed a pawn forward one
square. Her opponent, Barbara Colasante, responded immediately
by pushing one of her pawns to the eighth and final rank,
thereby winning the pawn game, a variation of regular chess.
"Yeah!" Colasante said, thrusting her arms in the air. An hour
earlier, Boyer and Colasante did not even know the rules of
chess. But as they sat in the library at Aldan Basics School in
Aldan, outside Philadelphia, one morning a week before classes
began, the two were learning to play so they could teach the
game to their 3rd-grade students this year. This fall, schools
in Philadelphia and in and around Tampa have added chess to 2nd-
and 3rd-grade curricula. In so doing, they are joining schools
in New York, Seattle, San Diego and Minneapolis. Philadelphia
pilot program In Philadelphia