![]() ![]() “He had good skills,” he said, a little plaintively. The other guy was simply better than him, Sebastian explained. Sebastian dropped into the chair opposite her and handed her his chess notation book, where he’d scrawled all sixty-five of his moves as well as all of his opponent’s. For this tournament, she had chosen the deep vermilion of red velvet cake. She was in her mid-thirties, dressed all in black, her pale skin made paler by the contrast with her brightly dyed hair, which changed hues somewhat from season to season. Sebastian slouched into Union B and approached the small table where Spiegel, tall and slender, sat behind a chessboard. The ritual for students on the IS 318 team was that, win or lose, after each game they would come back to the team room for a post-mortem with the school’s chess teacher, Elizabeth Spiegel. Sebastian, a short, stocky, quiet Latino with round cheeks and a thick bristle of black hair, was in the sixth grade at Intermediate School 318 in Brooklyn, and two days earlier, along with sixty teammates and a handful of teachers and parents, he had traveled eleven hours in a chartered bus to Columbus, Ohio, for a few days of competitive chess. A few moves later, when his defeat was complete, Sebastian limply shook hands with the boy who had beaten him, a sandy-haired kid from a central Ohio suburb, shuffled his way through the cavernous convention-center ballroom where a thousand heads were bowed over chessboards, and slunk back to Union B, the windowless conference room down the hall that was his chess team’s temporary home. ![]() And the next minute he was in deep trouble, his advantage squandered, his king scurrying across the board like a frightened little mouse, fleeing his opponent’s rook. One minute he was up by a bishop and a pawn, in good position, feeling strong, looking to start off the 2011 National Junior High Chess Championships with a victory. Sebastian Garcia couldn’t figure out where he’d gone wrong. The following excerpt is from Chapter Three (“How to Think”) It will not only inspire and engage readers, it will also change our understanding of childhood itself. This provocative and profoundly hopeful book has the potential to change how we raise our children, how we run our schools, and how we construct our social safety net. With the right support, as Tough’s extraordinary reporting makes clear, children who grow up in the most painful circumstances can go on to achieve amazing things. But innovative thinkers around the country are now using this knowledge to help children overcome the constraints of poverty. And he provides us with new insights into how to help children growing up in poverty.Įarly adversity, scientists have come to understand, not only affects the conditions of children’s lives, it can also alter the physical development of their brains. ![]() He uncovers the surprising ways in which parents do-and do not-prepare their children for adulthood. ![]() Through their stories-and the stories of the children they are trying to help-Tough traces the links between childhood stress and life success. How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character. ![]()
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