What’s chess have to do with baseball?

Ask Riley Dahlberg, a junior at Mountain Heritage High School.

“I’m a pretty good pitcher. I also play third base,” Riley said. “Chess is helping me think differently and be more strategic about the game, so I think it’s helping me get better at the head game.”

That’s where Brent Laws comes in. The math teacher at Mountain Heritage is all about helping students get better at using their heads.

Teaching Thinking

Riley stopped by to get help on his chess game as Dr. Laws and I were finishing up after I’d spent third period in his classroom. Laws told me that he felt his job was to help students develop their cognitive skills. His approach to teaching and learning is as much about chess as it is about math. He wants his students to learn how to think.

During the lesson in Math I class, Dr. Laws wrote a quadratic equation on the board and asked his students to think about how he had figured out the values of the coefficients. He paused several times to ask students to think through something before explaining how to do it. He asked them to predict, make their best guess and engage in conversation with a partner. All of these strategies allowed his students to struggle to “figure it out.” Throughout the lesson, he engaged his students’ cognitive abilities. Too often, students are the passive receivers of the thinking of the teacher. Learning works best when students do the thinking.

After class, Dr. Laws asked if I would be interested in reading his doctoral thesis on the use of chess to develop cognitive skills. He shared that research has found that students’ desire to be successful at the game of chess can serve to develop complex reasoning skills. In fact, there is a strong correlation between learning to play chess and academic achievement. As we were talking about the value of intentionally focusing on cognitive and metacognitive skills, in walked Riley, more evidence of the value of students doing the thinking.

Top Skills for Getting a Job

Aligned with Meghan Casserly’s article 10 Skills That Will Get You a Job in 2013, Dr. Laws is being strategic in preparing his students for college, careers and life. In class and in Chess & Cheese (the chess club at Mountian Heritage), he is helping students gain the abilities to perform the top three skills Casserly has identified, all of which are seen as being needed in nine out of the 10 most in-demand jobs.

No. 1 Critical Thinking: Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems

No. 2 Complex Problem Solving: Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions

No. 3 Judgment and Decision-Making: Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate ones

Like playing chess, cognition requires the learner to think open-mindedly, gather, interpret and assess relevant information, come to well-reasoned conclusions, and take action to solve complex problems.

The question is, “Who is doing most of the thinking in your classroom?”