I would love to welcome Ethan Zhang, who will be a new teacher starting in the spring term, teaching the Pawn’s program. Ethan has many chess achievements, like placing well at the OSCF state championships, and at the Oregon Open tournament.
He has a lot of teaching experience, teaching not only chess but other subjects! He even has a reward for over 100 hours of volunteering and community service. I wonder, how much experience do you have teaching little kids in 1st or 2nd grade? That is who will be joining the pawn program, and you will need to be prepared! Some of these kids can be very naughty, so here is some advice : Make sure to keep control of the class at all times; this means raising your voice when kids get off topic.
How hard do you think it will be teaching very young kids with no knowledge of chess? One tip is that you will need to be very patient with them, because it’s ok if they do not know the answer. You will need to help them out as much as possible on topics that are hard to understand. My plan was originally to do one lesson per day, but in the Pawn’s program you will definitely need more time to cover the hard topics. Something that will help you out a lot too is keeping the kids engaged. Make sure that after you finish teaching the lesson you do lots of exercises and ask everyone an equal amount of times.
Ethan, we are so grateful to have you as a part of Puddletown and I know you will do great teaching!
