Welcome Knightmares!

Please come and enjoy playing chess with your friends while learning from Evergreen's team of experienced chess coaches. Students are placed with other players of comparable chess-playing strength and are coached appropriate to their own performance level.

Chess is many things to many people. For students, chess is an intellectual contest of mind and will and has become a significant educational tool for stimulating critical thinking and creative problem solving. Chess is much more about figuring things out than about knowing what to do. To play chess is to learn. Parents and students involved in primary and secondary schools throughout America have seen chess make learning fun, witnessed chess bring families together, and watched students make new friends while using their minds in innovative and insightful ways. Chess has become a part of modern education and is pro-family, pro-education and pro-social.

The skills useful to generating successful chess play facilitate academic success and help to build personal confidence in expressing one's own ideas in concrete form. Chess is a robust game which engages much of the human mind and heart when played enthusiastically. Chess requires and uses many intellectual and perceptual competencies: careful observation, verbal strategy building, and insight into another's purposes and intentions.

Chess is narrative: each game tells a story and has a beginning, a middle, and an end with plot twists generated through the mutual creative efforts of two inventive minds at work. The players create applicable chess sentences as they navigate their way through the course of a game. Chess players write their own script ('play-write') as they imagine their game into being.

Chess, like music and mathematics, has its own notational system, a collected body of work (games) dating back centuries, and permits innovation and improvisation in its expression. Chess helps to develop and support decision making skills in the face of incomplete information. Chess facilitates a powerful unification of perception, thought, will, and action in student development.

Parents support extracurricular chess with their efforts and leadership as a supplement to classroom education. Chess play and practice serve as positive, challenging, and character-building activities. Parents see the need for students to develop healthy habits of mind and value the critical thinking and creative problem solving skills inherent in studying and playing chess.

The Evergreen School Chess Club invites all students to participate in chess club on Wednesday afternoons. Boys are welcome; girls are welcome: all parents and students are welcome! Chess is a fun and educational activity that teaches logic, goal-oriented thinking, and creativity by means of a hands-on cooperative dialog between two players. Chess as a sport, a science and an art allows students to interact in a positive, life-affirming, and enriching way. Let's play chess!

Dr. Leo Stefurak, Head Chess Coach

The Evergreen School's Chess Club Suggestions
Your child will be able to concentrate and focus on chess if he or she is not hungry. The school does not supply snacks to the after school classes - therefore, PLEASE include extra snack for your child on Wednesday!

Parents can help chess club in several ways:

1. Come at 3pm and help supervise kids before the coaches arrive at 3:15 . Kids are having snack and getting set up in the class. Parents can help supervise kids getting the "chess equipment box" as well. The advanced class now has Chronos clocks to keep track of, and several classes will have individual recording books to put away as well.

2. Stay for the class. Having at least one other adult in the room helps the coaches supervise the kids, have things copied if necessary, leave the room briefly if necessary, etc. You get a free chess lesson as well! It's fine to have several adults listening - the children understand that the lesson is important and interesting when they see us paying attention. Some classes will have recess - parent can help walk children back and forth from the playground.

3. Come into room when early for pickup - it's fun to watch the children playing, and it helps the coach maintain a quiet playing area when parents are around.

4. Help the children clean up. Equipment needs to be put away carefully (the children should be learning to help do this) and the room generally straightened up. This means staying 10 to 15 minutes after class. Even if you can only do this once, it's helpful!

If you can help with any of these chores, we'd be so appreciative!! Our coaches are tremendous, but chess clubs truly thrive with parent participation. Occasional or drop in help greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,
Evergreen Chess Club parent volunteer team

Save the date! Our home tournament, The Evergreen School Knightmares Gauntlet will take place on Saturday, January 31, 2009.  Early registrations will open shortly at http://signup4chess.com.

WHSCA Info rmation about Washington Scholastic Tournaments – announcements, results

Ratings Find your player's Northwest chess rating here (NWRS)

2007 Washington State Elementary Championship

Northwest Chess Calendars of adult and scholastic tournaments, news about chess & the Northwest chess community.

Seattle Chess Club Adult chess club that welcomes advanced students. USCF rated games. Contact Mary or Eve for more information.

US Chess Federation (USCF) The national chess organization. They establish the rules and ratings for adult and scholastic chess. Look here for scholastic National tournaments. You can also look up your player's rating in the member services area.

The Internet Chess Club Many players favorite playing site. A pay site ($24.50 per year for students) with 24 hour games in a friendly environment. Play chess, Siamese (bughouse), giveaway, and other fun chess variants too. Consistent and reliable ratings. Parents: this site has filters for rude behavior.

Chess Games Site Grandmaster games for advanced players to review

Clock rules Learn about using clocks for longer time control games – USCF rules

Benefits of chess In case you needed more convincing!

WHSCA Information about Washington Scholastic Tournaments - announcements, results