Check, Mate!!

Students at the Douglasville, Georgia Boys and Girls Club are learning some new moves—chess moves. One of the goals of our chess pilot program is to inspire students to learn an ancient game which can impact skills for today’s global marketplace. In the past, royalty played the game as a means of developing the survival skills needed to make wise choices. Those same skills are needed to solve today’s challenges.

Each Friday for eight weeks, students in Douglasville learned how to recognize patterns on the chessboard, and then learned how to relate that learning process to what they encounter at home and school. When students learn how to think critically, they make better choices, and students who make better choices have more options for their future. And the future for the students at the Douglasville Boys and Girls Club is starting to look brighter now that they are learning the Royal Game.