This investigation looked at the influence of a chess program on adolescents’ attitudes towards schooling at an alternative charter school in a high-risk urban context. Participants included school administrators, subject teachers, and 15 chess players, all of whom were African American male students from low-income backgrounds. Interview data revealed that the game of chess had a positive impact on the adolescents’ attitudes toward schooling in a number of ways by: (1) engaging these adolescents in interactions with a supportive school professional, (2) having the students socialize in a violence-free environment, and (3) providing students with opportunities to explore life beyond their neighborhood.
This lesson utilizes Good Fortune: My Journey to Gold Mountain, a well-written autobiography that tells of one family’s story of immigration to the US through Angel Island in the 1930s. This lesson can be used in a secondary school classroom to discuss controversial issues related to immigration quotas and discrimination. The book demonstrates the great desire of immigrants to survive and provokes thoughts and feelings that move adolescents to reflection in speaking and writing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.