Bottle caps rework into queens, knights, and pawns that assist youngsters learn to regulate feelings, socialize, and resolve conflicts.
Agustín Teglia, a sociologist by career, discovered to play chess as a toddler, inspired by his mom. He remembers having a board in the lounge the place he performed along with his brother and cousin. Years later, when he began working in literacy packages, he started organizing workshops in weak Buenos Aires neighborhoods and juvenile detention and psychiatric facilities for youngsters and adults.
A Sport for Everybody
A chessboard with black and white bins and 32 items are the instruments that Teglia discovered to face violence and marginality. He shared his technique with kids and youngsters from weak areas and others in juvenile felony establishments.
Rising up, Teglia heard the bias that chess was a sport for the neatest and, in lots of circumstances, the prosperous. Nevertheless, he found that by way of apply, the exercise may develop into a pedagogical machine able to fostering group dynamics and integration. He additionally discovered that with some simplifications, anybody may begin taking part in on the primary day at any age.
“We begin by telling the story of the sport and the items, suspending some extra summary guidelines like checking for direct fight the place items are captured. Then, we regularly incorporate extra guidelines to make the sport extra advanced and strategic,” he says.
“Once I began working in Villa 21 [a low-income area in Buenos Aires], I needed to discard my prejudices. 5-year-old youngsters bought excited once I advised them the historical past of chess and immersed them within the cultural world of the sport,” he remembers.
Teglia emphasizes some great benefits of chess as “a playful exercise that develops lively consideration.” He mentions working with kids identified with consideration deficit dysfunction, highlighting that generally it’s not a flaw however a method to navigate the world.
Though he doesn’t maintain monitor of the variety of individuals in his workshops, Teglia estimates that within the 13 years of his work, there have been a number of hundred individuals in teams of 20 to 40. Presently, he’s planning courses concurrently at a psychiatric establishment and on the admission and referral middle for juvenile penal circumstances, the place he divides the kids into ranges based mostly on their ages.
To Socialize and Focus
“In 2010, I started organizing workshops in kids’s properties and integrated chess into literacy workshops in Villa 21 as one other proposal for inventive expression and play,” he remembers. He explains that “this sport impacts how kids relate to information and problem-solving, thus aiding within the studying course of.” One among his college students expresses it in his personal phrases: “I prefer it, and I get hooked as a result of it helps me assume.”
The gaming periods are usually not oblivious to the clock: “It’s very needed as a result of it permits engaged on time administration. Every participant has to handle it for strikes and, in a broader sense, in organizing the exercise,” clarifies Teglia.
The skilled additionally factors out the “socializing” potential of the exercise. “It’s a great way to generate a mediator, a standard code to kind a gaggle. There may be kids of various ages and ranges, and each has a job to obtain and combine classmates or educate them guidelines.”
Feelings can floor throughout board video games. Teglia provides examples: A boy hesitated to sacrifice the queen to save lots of the king as a result of he wished to guard his bonds. “They determine pawns with youngsters like them, and the king and queen with their dad and mother,” he says. He provides that in addition to socializing and resolving conflicts, the sport encourages individuals to learn to comply with guidelines.
Along with taking his proposal to weak neighborhoods, Teglia added workshops on the main college of Membership Racing de Avellaneda and in psychiatric establishments for kids, youngsters, and adults: “Observe facilitates higher group of thought for individuals with psychological well being problems and permits their subjectivity to emerge,” he says.
One other implementation of the sport is within the juvenile penal space of the Council of the Rights of Kids and Adolescents, by way of which he organizes workshops in closed and semi-closed instructional facilities. In these areas, the place there may be a point of confinement, the black and white items enable kids and younger individuals to play out unknown or hidden inner forces and launch tensions and conflicts, explains Teglia, paraphrasing ideas from Argentine author and thinker Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. He then provides an instance: A boy detained along with his mom throughout a grocery store theft refused to lose the queen and most well-liked to lose the king, dropping sight of the sport’s essential goal.
Recycling and Constructing Items
Workshops don’t require vital infrastructure in public or non-public establishments. “Materiality is secondary; first, I educate them to expertise the foundations of the sport,” Teglia clarifies. Generally he works with very restricted assets however finds alternate options with cardboard and bottle caps to create video games that may even be taken residence or given as presents. “You add artwork and the angle of recycling, and the sport emerges from scratch.”
So in conferences in properties and emergency neighborhoods, the sport begins with making the board with bottle caps, plastic containers, and items of stone or wooden that rework into kings, queens, knights, pawns, bishops, and rooks. “But it surely’s curious as a result of each kids and adults care about materiality. Giant and delightful items generate enthusiasm or curiosity within the youngest or individuals with despair,” he argues.
The Dream of Multiplying Workshops
Teglia is satisfied that workshops may be multiplied in numerous establishments and in all provinces of the nation: “The potential of replicating them and producing a crosscutting proposal on the nationwide stage all the time will depend on public coverage. There are some established packages like Ajedrecear that promote chess apply and set up tournaments, however they’re being defunded. The identical goes for public schooling. Nevertheless, it could be fascinating to include the exercise in all potential contexts. I advertise, but it surely’s more and more troublesome for me to coordinate with establishments which have their issues.”
In its place, Teglia gathered his expertise and step-by-step information to arrange and maintain a workshop over time in Caballito de Troya, a e-book by Editorial Marat. The textual content isn’t a set of anecdotes or the story of the expertise of bringing chess to those environments, however a educating handbook for the sport. “I search so as to add instruments for academics, for his or her toolbox, in order that they have extra prospects for intervention,” summarizes the creator.
The feedback shared by workshop individuals (kids and younger individuals) and their dad and mom help this. “The most effective half is making the board and taking it residence to play,” says one of many youngsters. “Since he began taking part in chess, it not solely helped him focus, but additionally he began doing higher at school. I can’t clarify why, but it surely’s true,” says one of many participant’s fathers, whereas the trainer listens greater than glad.
This story was initially printed in RED/ACCIÓN (Argentina) and is republished inside the Human Journalism Community program, supported by the ICFJ, Worldwide Heart for Journalists.
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Eva Marabotto
is a journalist and editor with expertise in print, radio, tv and on-line media for Argentina’s Diario Clarín and Agencia Télam. As a working options journalist, she covers a variety of subjects, together with metropolis beats, schooling, society and tradition, and solidarity efforts. |
