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When I started teaching, I didn’t have any particular understanding of how chess players improve — just my own scattershot experiences. Elizabeth immediately showed me a few things:

Last year, we had our first ever camp. We put an amazing team of instructors together, almost all of whom are returning this year. It was a huge amount of work, but also a blast. There is something special about working with highly motivated teachers at the top of their game.

By now, I understood that typical American approaches to teaching beginners are incorrect, moving so quickly through the basics that most students never master them. I knew how to help a young beginner develop their vision of the board, building up their chess as if constructing a castle.

Our Step 1 beginner chess class reached an important milestone yesterday: Students learned about check! A check is an attack on your king. Parker told them that being in check is like hearing a fire alarm: You have to stop whatever you’re doing and deal with it. 

What should a young beginner do once they know how to defend? They should practice!