Check Mates
Lakeside School, where mini Bill Gates and mini Paul Allen once nerded out over proto computers, is an obvious hatching ground for world leaders—a teen Ivy League campus with brick facades and a clock tower. But these days, the future masters of the universe are as likely to be at chessboards as keyboards. Blame Siva Sankrithi, a math teacher who moonlights as the chess coach. By placing Lakeside’s chess team on par with, say, the football team—Lakeside nabbed first place at both the Seattle Metro Chess League and the state team championships last year—Sankrithi has turned rook wrangling into the extracurricular activity on campus. During lunch and other downtimes, cadres of kids can be found bent over speed-chess matches and Bughouse, a variant of the game played in teams. On Monday night the more formal training ensues, as Sankrithi leads 25 students through drills with the help of local chess master Josh Sinanan of the U.S. Chess League. The sessions, says Sankrithi, not only make for better board game jockeys, but reward critical thinking and ingenuity. The pawn-pushing posse’s goal: Dominate the United States Chess Federation tournament in Nashville in April 2011. After that: Dominate, like the Lakesiders before them, everything else.—CD
Social Ed
There are just 67 students in grades nine through 12 this year at Seattle Waldorf. That’s because Waldorf’s new at the high school game. (Until three years ago it was only a collection of K through 8 schools.) You could argue that the traditional concept of school would be new to Waldorf, too. There are no electives. Virtually no textbooks—students create their own, called “morning lesson books.” No courses as you might recognize them. Instead, this fall the freshman class spent two weeks working on a biodynamic farm; the sophomore class worked at a sustainable forestry camp; the junior class focused on urban manufacturing. “The world needs human beings who can work with each other in a profound way,” explains admissions director Neil Weinberg. “It’s a social education.”
And once students go for the nontraditional track, they never go back. Alum Clare O’Connor tried. After attending Waldorf for grades K through 8, O’Connor wanted to branch out and attend a traditional school. So for ninth and 10th grades, she did, earning straight As. But she was bored by nightly worksheets and weekly quizzes. She reentered the Waldorf fold for her junior and senior years with rekindled interest in a learning environment that nurtured independent thinking among a class full of like-minded peers.—HM
Published: December 2010
Lakeside can admit great chess players…and therefore stack a team. Would be more impressive for Garfield or some other public school to do well in chess.