Joe a teacher?  Yes, it's a scary thought.  But Mrs. Arenivas from Dunbar Elementary School didn't know any better and signed up Joe as their 5th and 6th grade chess teacher.

The class is part of a nationwide "Chess in the School" program  to introduce chess as part of the school ciriculum.  Chess is a good tool to learn and practice reasoning, problem solving and analytical thinking while having fun playing a game.

As strange as it may sound teaching chess during the school day, the kids were quite interested in learning chess, though it probably was because more time spent on learning chess meant less time spent on learning math or English.  Whatever the reason, it was a blessing to see the kids go from asking "is this like checkers?" to playing games amongst themselves.

One thing Joe got out of this was the realization of how much he likes to teach kids.  There's a particular satisfaction in thinking that "I might be a role model to some kid", and one day some kid is going to say "hey, remember when you said 'sometimes when you win, you really lose, and when you lose you really win'... hey I learned a lot from that".

You never know!  :)