Chess coaching in schools

Tuisceanch

Do any of the posters engage in coaching chess in schools and even derive a decent income from doing so? Also does anybody know what coaching qualifications are promoted in Ireland. Do people think that there is now an increased interest in teaching chess in schools? Any thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

cdeb

This on the ICU website should be of some help for starters anyway.

Not involved in schools coaching myself. I think junior chess is growing in Dublin in particular; not sure if that's stemming from schools level or club level. I think the internet is helping most; people who have an interest in chess can more easily find their local club and head up.

checknraise

There has been a massive increase in chess being taught in Dublin primary schools in the last 5 or 6 years and it is nearly all down to Alexander Baburin.

Alex is regularly looking to take on extra people so it would do no harm to drop Alex a mail if it is something you are interested in. I would not recommend it as a full time job but for any college students it is a handy way of making a few quid for a couple of hours work. The coaching will always be after school.

I am not sure what the interest is outside Dublin.

mikhail

There are a few people in Ireland who do a lot of schools coaching.

• Alexander Baburin (http://www.chesstoday.net/ , http://www.gmsquare.com/Baburin/coaching.html) has a network of coaches he supplies with material and provides to schools in the Dublin area.
• John Alfred (chessz.com) does a lot of coaching in the Limerick area.
• Michael Crowe is another guy who does a lot of coaching; he works with Baburin sometimes and he seems to have linked up with some other guys to form a (somewhat patchy) national network (http://chessforall.net/).

Tuisceanch

Thanks for the replies.Very useful information.

eclipsechaser

Tuisceanch wrote: »

Do any of the posters engage in coaching chess in schools and even derive a decent income from doing so? Also does anybody know what coaching qualifications are promoted in Ireland. Do people think that there is now an increased interest in teaching chess in schools? Any thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

The income is very decent for an hourly wage but typically you just get to teach for one hour on any given day (so you really need to factor in the time spent travelling to and from a school). As has been said before, it's very good money if you're a college student but not so great if that's your only source of income. Schools are off a lot too so the number of days to teach is limited.

Qualifications aren't required, I don't think. You will need to be Garda vetted and you obviously should be of a certain chess standard. Most important is to be able to control a class and communicate effectively. The ICU were running courses for instructors so it wouldn't hurt to attend those.

There's definitely a lot more teaching of chess going on in primary schools than what there used to be. From a Dublin perspective, GM Alex Baburin has got chess into a lot of primary schools and I can see first hand an increase in both the standard and number of juniors entering secondary school. The new Junior Cert format might also allow chess to be taught formally (as a short course) though that will be up to each individual school.