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Written by Alexey W. Root on
Fri, Jan 01 2010 (10:45)
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On Tuesday, January 5, 2010, I will begin my after-school chess club at Strickland Middle School. The club will be hosted by the Communities in Schools program. Chess club will be free and open to all Strickland Middle School students. For the previous five years, I volunteered teaching chess at Strickland during the school day from 1:15 to 1:55 p.m., known as advisory period. During the last two years (2007-2008 and 2008-2009), students had chess three days a week with me and study skills and character education with the paid teacher on the other two days. One advantage of chess advisory was regular, required attendance by students, which eased tracking progress and planning instruction. With advisory eliminated this year, I chose after-school for chess instead. What do blog readers see as the advantages and disadvantages of after-school chess club compared to school-day chess instruction?
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The good thing as you pointed out was that you knew who you would have in the club and it did standardize instruction. However, the big, big drawback as it was structured was that it was limited to the "smart" kids--those that had already passed the test or viewed as no need to worry about passing the remaining test. In this regards it became exclusionary and also reinforces the notion that chess is just for smart kids.
Now the flip side of this is the after school program. Depending upon the school you are in, how flexible they are, and how they have things set-up--you still run into the danger of it being exclusionary (although by far and away less so) if you run into it conflicting with required tutoring....so an advantage is that it opens it up to more students. The other advantage is that it is in a less formal setting which fosters more interaction with students as the "school culture of teacher-student relationship" isn't there (although in your case I don't think you run into that anyway).
The bad part is as you pointed out---for many kids it is a hit or miss proposition--if they choose to or not. Also, you run into the problem of the kids forgetting to tell parents or parents forgetting and coming to pick up their kids and wanting them right then as it is an inconvenience.
Another problem you can run into and this depends on school culture is the interruptions that some teachers/administrators cause because since it is an after school program it might not be seen as a valuable part of the overall school program and thus, not important.
This leads to challenges in terms of instruction. What I have done is plan instruction and who shows up is who shows up. Then for those that miss out on instruction as I am able to I give them a seperate lesson that goes back over what they missed (I only do this for the more regular attendees that are committed and miss from time to time and not the sporadic ones).
Hope this helps out and hope you had a great Christmas and rang in the New Year on a good note.