“Thank you Andre, thanks to the Smart Kids Chess Team,

As a parent of a child who attends your classes at Smart Kids, we witnessed a remarkable transformation in our child’s academic performance since they began learning chess.

At first, we enrolled him at Smart Kids Chess to help with focus and patience, but then we started to realize how it was changing him even more. We saw how he now is recalling things easier from what we’d asked him to do. When we asked him how he remembered he told us he used your rapid recall technique.  Then when he was doing his math he was able to remember the steps in the equation he had to figure out. We asked him how he remembered that and he said that it was a technique he learnt in your chess class called mnemonics. He just had a sense of confidence in what he was doing and even how he explained it to us.

We also noticed that he approaches school assignments with more confidence, and we noticed he organized his notes differently, again something he said he learnt in your class. He mentioned a “Cornell Structure” for notes and explained how it helped make things connect to one another. We never thought his chess classes would have helped him organize his work. Again thank you!

But what my husband noticed the most was his concentration level; he got hyper-focused in his homework. Even at his school, his teacher told us he is showing more patience and focus, it’s just carried over into his studies. He was struggling with staying on task, but now he seems involved, more present and not so easily distracted. Its really saved us a lot of frustration to keep him on task.

And you recall, somethings he just shut down when upset, like he was defeated but recently we see that he thinks about his mistake but now he just drives through his failure telling me that his failure is not failure if he learns from it to get better; telling me this is what you taught him.

Thank you, just thank you so much… you taught him to be more confident. Thank you for helping him succeed.

Thank you! – R.T.”