Chess lessons are about more than just chess. My fondest memories of my childhood revolve around chess tournaments. I played competitively in chess tournaments beginning at the age of 11 until I began running my own chess clubs as a middle school teacher. I owe the game of chess for teaching me patience, good sportsmanship and self-confidence. As a scholastic player in Florida in the 1990's I had the honor of being named Florida Elementary Chess Champion two times and hold a chess rating of approximately 1800. I love offering that same excitement that I found as a child, to the students.

Looking for an ongoing chess tournament club? I have 9 clubs scheduled throughout the week so everyone can find a day that fits their schedule. 
https://outschool.com/classes/enter-the-chess-arena-weekly-chess-tournament-club-all-ability-levels-R1aGky5G?usid=qxS2sb5B&signup=true&utm_campaign=share_activity_link
Monday 4pm EST & 7pm EST
Tuesday 10am and 4pm EST
Wednesday 4pm EST
Friday 4pm and 7pm EST
Saturday 1pm EST
Sunday 1pm EST

Our chess lessons will focus on the key ingredients to a successful chess game, opening, middle and endgame strategy, essential tactics as well as checkmate patterns. Our first lessons will be all about developing an exciting and engaging plan to both improve your child's chess game as well as focus on building confidence in choosing the best move in various scenarios that tend to appear in real scholastic chess games. One thing our lessons will never be is boring. My style of teaching is designed to engage students and lead them to enjoy the process of becoming a better chess player.

All of our lessons will start of with a chess match between the student and myself. This will give me the opportunity to assess the areas that we should focus on in both this and upcoming lessons. During the game we will pause to discuss why the student chose a given move or why they think I made the move I chose. We will work together on classic checkmate patterns as well as introduce some basic tactics that we will work on in future lessons. 

Each week of our chess lessons is completely independent and the learner and stop or start the class at any time. We will focus on the elements of chess that will lead to the greatest benefit to your child's playing ability. However, the schedule below is a good representation of the topics covered in the first four weeks of the class.  

Week of 2/15:  
Topic: Forks and more forks
Skills assessment
Student vs Teacher with discussion of strategy and tactics as we play
Chess Puzzles: Forks
Chess Puzzles 1 Move Checkmates
Queen and Rook vs King Endgames
Wrap-up

Week of 2/22:  
Topic: Stalemates? Never! Winning with a Queen and Rook
Skills assessment
Student vs Teacher with discussion of strategy and tactics as we play
Chess Puzzles: Pins
Chess Puzzles 1 or 2 Move Checkmates
Queen/Rook and King vs King Endgames
Wrap-up

Week of 3/1:  
Topic: Discovered Attacks And Devious Checkmates
Skills assessment
Student vs Teacher with discussion of strategy and tactics as we play
Chess Puzzles: Discovered Attacks
Chess Puzzles 1 or 2 Move Checkmates
Wrap-up

Week of 3/8:  
Topic: Sneaky Checkmates: Back Rank Mate
Skills assessment
Student vs Teacher with discussion of strategy and tactics as we play
Chess Puzzles: Skewers and Back-Rank Checkmates
Chess Puzzles 2 Move Checkmates
Wrap-up