Meet the Chess Center Team: Georgina Chin, Teacher
Bam! Bam bam!
As a teenager, the sound of palms slapping analog clocks would reverberate throughout our house for hours at a time. In the living room, a row of chess trophies sat on a shelf, witnessing my two younger brothers battling over a well-worn chessboard for hours at a time. Yet, despite the number of hours devoted to chess in my household, I was relatively removed from this activity — chess was something that girls didn’t really do.
Many years later, my interaction with chess was reignited by a challenge I faced as a teacher at McNair Elementary school in Herndon, Virginia: coming up with creative challenging ways to engage my students. At the time, McNair was a Title I school with many students receiving free and reduced lunches, so I was especially interested in a low-cost mentally engaging activity that might not otherwise have been available to them. Although I had not played for many years, I knew chess was definitely the avenue to pursue.
Luckily, thanks to my brothers’ ongoing interest in chess (both were holding outside jobs as chess coaches), I was able to consult them on how I might get started. With the support of my principal and the PTA I purchased some chess sets, a few books, and a teaching board. McNair’s first chess club was on its way! Much to my surprise and delight, initial interest greatly exceeded my expectations.
Fast forward ten years and the chess club remained hugely popular. With the club being consistently offered throughout the years, many McNair students had become skilled players, and several of them could now play beyond my abilities. Meanwhile, McNair had also changed and was now an Advanced Academics school.
Perhaps inspired by memories of the chess trophies sitting on the living room shelf, I thought it might be time to push the chess club in a more competitive direction. The parents supported this idea, and in 2011 we ventured off to the Virginia Scholastic Chess Championships where we placed ninth and fourteenth in the K-3 and K-5 divisions. The kids, their parents, and the rest of the school were thrilled!
At the urging of some of the parents as well as the PTA, I began organizing monthly USCF (US Chess Federation) rated tournaments at McNair. The only catch for me was that, to become a local Tournament Director, I had to start competing myself — a true eye-opener! My first tournament convinced me that I still had much to learn about the game.
Last year I retired from Fairfax County. During my 20 years at McNair I had the pleasure of working with hundreds of students and organizing more than 80 tournaments. I am happy and proud of all my students accomplished as well as how many of them were introduced to an experience they might never have encountered. My hope is that all of my students will continue to play and enjoy all that chess has to offer. As for myself, I am still learning and competing!
Meet the Chess Center Team: David Mehler, Founder/President/Teacher
The seeds of my love of teaching were planted in college — not because I had inspirational professors, but through my experiences as a founder of the Pail & Shovel Party. (Google it. I was gone by the time the flamingos landed and the Statue of Liberty arrived, but was involved with the conceptual stage.) Pail & Shovel taught me that anything can be turned into entertainment, entertainment holds people’s attention, and through that attention, education takes place.
During the lead-up to the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match I first became a chess teacher. I was a decent player devoid of teaching experience but after a while found ways to impart the rules and strategy of the game to kids who quickly passed me in skill.
After college, I became a high school classroom teacher with classes in social studies and math. I was the fun teacher in a conservative Catholic school, but always had the goal of getting students to think. When struggling students came to me for additional help, I taught them to play chess and watched as their intellectual self-confidence rose. Inner-city teens who had heard throughout their lifetimes that they would not be able to succeed academically learned that was a lie. If they could play chess, they could do math and understand literature.
During my practice of law, I brought chess to underserved schools, working to convince small children that there was magic in the pieces of plastic they moved around the square board. As they assimilated abstract concepts, their smiles of understanding were more satisfying than favorable verdicts in courtrooms.
When then-World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov asked me to teach chess for a couple of weeks to children who lived in public housing, that was the start of something quite wonderful. The Washington Post editorial noting the value of chess garnered the attention of people who helped create what has become the U.S. Chess Center. I stopped taking new legal clients and never looked back.
Team Standings after Match Day 2 for the Spring 2021 PCSAA Middle School Chess League
Saturday, March 27 was Match Day 2 (Rounds 3 & 4) of the Spring 2021 PCSAA Middle School Chess League.
DC International School and BASIS DC continue their fierce battle for the lead with Howard University Middle School for Mathematics and Science and Imagine Hope Community Charter School close at their heels.
We still have five Match Days (or 10 Rounds) to go. Good luck to all the teams!
Team Standings after Match Day 2
School | Match Points | Board Points (Tiebreaker Only) |
---|---|---|
DC International School | 4 | 16 |
BASIS DC | 4 | 15 |
Howard University Middle School of Mathematics & Science | 3 | 11 |
Imagine Hope Community Charter School | 3 | 10 |
E.L. Haynes Public Charter School | 1 | 5.5 |
Meridian Public Charter School | .5 | 2 |
Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys | 0 | 2 |
The Children’s Guild DC Public Charter School | 0 | .5 |
Brooklyn Castle re-release on March 5th, Panel discussion following with Soledad O’Brien at 8pm ET
The Emmy-nominated documentary film Brooklyn Castle is being re-released this Friday, March 5, 2021.
BROOKLYN CASTLE tells the stories of five members of the chess team at a Title 1 – below-the-poverty-line – inner city junior high school that has won more national championships than any other in the country.
To celebrate, Soledad O’Brien will host a panel discussion with Rochelle Ballantyne and Pobo Efekoro (students in the film), as well as Elizabeth Spiegel and John Galvin (teachers from the film) on March 5th at 8pm ET following the nationwide re-release. Soledad will discuss the power of chess, teaching, and defying the odds. Visit http://brooklyncastle.com/ for theater listings, streaming options, and more information.
Or rent the film right now for $1.99 (and up) from:
Amazon Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Brooklyn-Castle…/dp/B00BB1VDLC
YouTube Movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYA98pBGqZA
Or stream online for FREE with participating Library Cards or University IDs at Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/product/brooklyn-castle