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The Vice President of the Nigeria Chess Federation, Adewole Adeyinka, has expressed confidence that the ‘School Instructor’ seminar for chess trainers and educators in Nigeria will improve the growth of the game and adoption of chess in school curriculum, Saturday PUNCH reports.
The seminar was organised by the NCF under the leadership of Sani Mohammed in partnership with the FIDE took place in Lagos and witnessed certificates issued to participants after the course.
The training and subsequent examination by the FIDE Chess in Education team, saw 26 trainers attain the pass mark needed to qualify for the certificates of Schools Instructor. The average percentage obtained was 70, while the highest mark obtained was 90 per cent.
According to Anzel Laubscher, one of the lecturers at the seminar, said the significance of the training is to have every single child in grade one, to know how to play chess.
The whole idea about the school’s instructor title is that we want to train the teachers,” she said.
“We found that it is easier to train a teacher, who already knows how to work with children at the foundation phase, to teach them a new skill, and then they can apply it in the classroom, because they already know how to work with children. This is our way to reach the masses. It is for mass participation as well. Ideally, at the end of the day, we would like to have every single child in grade one, to know how to play chess.
“We thought that was the best way to do it. We get quite a lot of existing chess trainers and chess coaches that really benefit from this. Knowing how to play chess and being a good player does not mean that you know how to work with children. There is a big difference, and we can actually damage our future generation by not teaching them the way they deserve to be taught,” she said.
Laubscher also spoke about creating clubs within schools and also on job creations through chess.
“There is an education pathway that we have worked out. We start with certain phases and then we want to improve. We are not leaving the trainers here. However, we must also realize that once the teachers are empowered in that sense, they can do the basics with the kids, and then we can assist them to create a club in the school. This is where our existing trainers and chess coaches come in, because this will also create work for them and jobs for them. This is like a micro-environment that feed each other,” Laubscher said.