Howard Nero

The "Checkmate! Chess for Champions (CHESS)" program is the brainchild of Nero. It provides students at MicroSociety Magnet School an opportunity to apply reasoning, patience, and critical thinking to chess as well as other learning opportunities. In order for learning to become functional, CHESS is a relaxed afternoon learning activity following the school's center-based learning in the morning. CHESS is integrated into the regular curriculum, and the math focused after-school CHESS idea was piloted two years ago. Since then, student math scores have increased by 30 percent, illustrating a remarkable impact. The program will be pairing students with on-line, age-mate players around the world. In addition to the 50 fifth- and sixth-grade students already participating, the program will expand to include any student with a desire to participate in the after-school CHESS program. The program instills self-esteem, self-motivation and sharpens critical thinking to open-ended questions due to the decision making that comes with playing chess. Nero resides in Wallingford.