Everyman Publishes Rockford Coach Czerwin's Chess Progress

Rockford Guilford High School has not had a chess program for a few years but thanks to second-year teacher Erik Czerwin, the Vikings will be competing in the Northern Illinois Chess League (NICL) in 2014-2015.

Czerwin was named the Illinois Chess Coaches Association "Coach of the Year" in 2012 when he was coaching at Marengo High School. Since then, Coach Czerwin has compiled some of his first-rate training materials into an instructive book being published today by Everyman Press.

A description and an exerpt can be found here. The book is subtitled: From Beginner to Winner.

Coach Czerwin was nice enough to submit to an interview shortly after the book was released in Europe this summer.

ICA: How has it been working with Everyman Press on your new book?

EC: It has been an interesting experience.  It was surprisingly easy to get them to take a look at a sample of what I had produced, and getting the contract together was a breeze after they said they were interested.  At times in the writing/editing process, there were long delays between communications, and since I didn’t have an agent helping me, I often found myself wondering if it would be appropriate to ask certain questions about time constraints and payments.  However, things went very smoothly otherwise.  Edits were always concise and helped to improve the product.  The final stage of getting the draft adjusted for book size and final fonts/publishing was exciting.  To see my draft turned into something that looked so professional was a great experience.  It really took a team at Everyman to get it together, and I think the finished product is gorgeous.

 

ICA: How has the book changed from its original conception to what is coming out?

 

EC: The book has changed very little from when I started putting it together.  One of the things that I sent with my sample was a Table of Contents, that way they could see where I planned on going with the rest of the book (aside from the first chapter that I also sent).  That table of contents is virtually unchanged.  We did cut out a couple of things that aren’t really necessary for this book, but it wasn’t hard to let them go because I understood what they were trying to accomplish.  It was also extremely difficult to format some of my ideas for book format.

 

ICA: Who is the target audience for this book?

 

EC: I originally started putting the book together for some coaches in the NICL conference that had asked for some materials that I used.  I was just going to send them my files, but I had wanted to bring all my random things together for awhile, so I used that as an excuse to do so.  About a quarter of the way into the project, I realized this might be something that could be a book, so I started snooping around on publisher websites.  So, my original target was other chess coaches who coach in a team setting (like a textbook of sorts).  However, as I started steering it more towards a published book, I tried to open it up so that an individual could pick up the book and use it to learn the game. 

 

ICA: Do you have a follow up book in mind?

 

EC: I am thinking about (and have already started) writing a book of complete lesson plans to accompany “Chess Progress.”  More of a “teacher’s edition.”  Honestly, I started writing out detailed lesson plans for myself to use this season based on the text.  As I was doing so, I thought it might be a good thing to try and publish, but I haven’t even spoken to Everyman about the idea yet.  What I’ve created so far is complete lesson plans to use with a group of chess students; I’ve included lesson adjustments (for struggling students and students who excel), materials lists, exercises, homework, etc.  My idea is that, at some point in the future, I could try to partner with a supply company to sell package deals that would include a “Teacher Edition,” several copies of the original book, and several chess sets; that way a new school team would get all the materials they need to start teaching the basics of chess in one package.

 

I have no plans on doing anything more in-depth than this.  I believe that “Chess Progress” fills a gap to help beginners get to a point where they can more easily learn from intermediate and advanced chess books.  Basically, after someone has learned the concepts in my book, they should be able to tackle other instructional chess books with more ease. 

 

ICA: How does this book relate to your experience as a high school coach?

 

EC:  I’m not the greatest chess player, but I do pride myself on being a strong teacher.  As I took on the chess coaching role, I had to learn the game and learn how to teach it at the same time.  Each year, I had to adjust several aspects of the lessons based on new students, various experience levels, and my own growing knowledge of the game.  I applied everything I have learned about education to those lessons, and eventually, I had a decent program that I was pretty happy with.  “Chess Progress” is just a nutshell of what I used to teach my students the game.  It has worked well for me and my teams, so I’ve decided to go ahead and share it.  One reason I think it’s a good chess book is because it is different than most chess books available now.  I think it’s the first “basics of chess” book written from the perspective of a teacher rather than the perspective of a chess player.  Everything I learned about chess and about teaching chess came from experience and from other coaches in the NICL, so the book is just me putting as much of that knowledge as I can into one place.

 

ICA: What are your feelings about the birth of a new program at your current high school?  What are you goals there?

 

EC: I’m very excited be starting a team at Guilford.  I led the charge on getting a team together at my past school, and we had great success.  Guilford is a very different kind of school, but the students have been the driving force behind the team.  When the students get behind the program, that’s when it succeeds.  My goal is always to push the team towards excellence.  I want to win, and I want my team to win (I’ll admit it).  However, my underlying goal is, and always has been, to help new people learn chess in all its richness.  Chess has a great many benefits mentally, socially, academically, etc., and I want to help other people discover those benefits as well.  I look forward to seeing new students catch the chess bug year after year.

 

ICA: How does chess relate to the pursuit of other types of knowledge?  You teach analysis and to some degree critical thinking in the examination of literature and writing... how does this dovetail with chess instruction?

 

EC: One of the things that I love so much about chess is that there’s always something new to learn.  Even the very best chess players constantly grow and stretch their analyses of various positions and openings.  The game is always growing in that regard, so it is a game that can continue to enrich the mind endlessly.  I view education in the same light; as a teacher, I’m a small influence in students’ ever-changing perception of the world, and only that for a brief moment in their lives.  My goal in teaching every subject is to help students understand that everything has multiple perspectives.  In literature, a poem/novel/story only has meaning for the reader because the reader has a whole life of experience behind them.  The reader brings all that experience and personality with them when they read, and their experience of that piece of literature can be enriched by stretching their own perspective. 

 

Sharing their own perspectives with others allows readers to further enhance their perspective on that piece of literature, and therefore, on themselves and the world.  Writing is a great play on that because the writer has to find a way to write what they mean and mean what they write, knowing full-well that each reader will bring with them their own life experiences to their reading.  A writer has to learn how to balance driving their own ideas forward while letting the reader create their own experience simultaneously.

 

Chess is the same…  Each player has a slightly different perspective on any given position.  Students of chess can learn about how other players have played that position, and there are certain fundamental elements within that position that each player should understand in order to appreciate it fully.  However, each player also needs to embrace their own perspective and use it in the game.  A coach’s job is to help players learn the fundamentals and also discover their own chess personality.  For example, a writer can write any sentence they want, but in a formal essay, a sentence must be properly formed and words must be spelled correctly.  Within that framework, the writer can say whatever they want.  In literature, a reader can have any perspective they want on a piece of literature, but it must be based on evidence within the text and be defendable. 

 

In chess, a player can play any legal move he wishes, though there will be some moves that are just objectively better than others.

 

ICA: What kind of advice do you have for new high school chess coaches?

 

EC: My best advice is to just dive in.  That’s what I did.  As a teacher, there were times that I was only a chapter or two ahead of my students, and when I started coaching chess, that’s exactly where I was.  I would learn a new skill or concept and teach it to the kids the next day.  It wasn’t particularly effective, but I also let the students know that’s what I was doing.  They knew, right from the beginning, that I was learning with them, and that helped them to feel comfortable challenging me and my “knowledge.” 

 

As the years went by and I had built up a knowledge base for myself, I started adding more “teaching flair” to the lessons and got better and better.  But the idea of teaching chess is always kind of problematic anyway since it’s such a personal understanding.  So, every mistake I made became a learning experience for my students and for me.  Every success I had was accidental.  I just kept pushing ahead until I found a way to feel comfortable being a coach.  For me, I feel most comfortable just teaching enough of the basics to get kids hooked.  Once they’re hooked, my job is less teaching and more guiding the student to the right resource. 

 

Once a kid wants to learn openings, I point them in the direction of resources they can use to learn the kind of openings they want to learn.  If they’re hunting for a really risky opening that no one really plays much, I keep my mouth shut and let them struggle with it until they realize the opening might be a problem.  Setting the chess hook and guiding chess growth is the job of the coach; learning the game is the job of the student.

 

ICA: Do you have any chess books that influenced you in this undertaking or might otherwise complement your book?

 

EC: There are several books that influenced me.  Jeremy Silman’s Reassess Your Chess has been a dramatic influence on my personal chess playing, and his books are always fantastic to read.  It was recommended to me by Coach Jeff Varda of McHenry early on in my coaching, and it’s the book that took my team’s and my own play to the next level.  I definitely tried to be as personal in my writing as Silman is in his books.  I love reading Reassess, if only for Silman’s voice.  He has a way of writing that makes it feel like I’m in a conversation rather than reading complex chess ideas.  Reassess Your Chess would be a great book to pick up after Chess Progress.

 

Bruce Pandolfini’s books have also been a great influence on Chess Progress.  His exercises are unique, challenging, but accessible. The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin has been a tremendous influence on my chess game, my teaching career, and my life.  I read it several years before starting my book, and after re-reading it recently, I was surprised at how much of Waitzkin’s teachings had permeated my life.  It is a book I recommend everyone to read, chess player or not.

 

Honestly, though, the biggest influences on the book were other coaches.  Many ideas in the exercises came from the coaches that I met through the NICL: Glen Gratz (North Boone), Phil Bratta (Stillman Valley), Coach Spizzirri (Cary-Grove, retired), Randy Sprayberry (Jefferson-Rockford, deceased), Dane Bell (Indian Creek), and Bill Feldman (DeKalb).  Every tip they gave me, I took back and used to great success.  Some were tweaked for my personality or team, some worked great right out of the box. 

 

ICA: How much time went into this... and what were the most time-consuming parts of the undertaking?

 

EC: From the start of putting it together until publishing took about a two years.  I started working on bringing all the materials together in the fall of 2012, contacted publishers that winter, finalized a contract with Everyman in April or May of 2013, and the US release date is September 2014.

 

Writing the book was pretty easy.  I’ve been a casual writer since high school, so the writing process comes very easy for me.  Creating the diagrams to go with each section was more difficult because I had to work to create diagrams that demonstrated the concept without being terrible positions.  Most of the edits suggested by the people at Everyman Chess were fixes and changes to my diagrams.  Even using ChessBase, I had missed several fairly obvious things.  It was a relief to have some very strong chess players double-checking the diagrams and suggesting changes. 

 

The most difficult part and the most time-consuming, was creating diagrams for the exercises.  It took a large amount of discipline on my part.  At first, I started off with a lot of gusto and enthusiasm for creating the exercises, but as the lessons get more and more complex, it became more and more difficult to create them.  There were days when I loved creating the exercises because I had fun with various concepts, and there were days when I struggled to come up with methods of demonstrating the ideas.  However, I forced myself to work on them every day until they were finished, and I’m very happy with the final product. 

 

The worst part was developing a diagram from scratch, imagining that it would work great, then plugging it into ChessBase and discovering that I had missed something obvious.  From there I’d move a piece, add a piece, remove a piece, and so on until the diagram was just right.  Sometimes I had to spend hours on a single diagram.  Some took days.  And even then, the editors at Everyman found several that needed changes.  In the end, the exercises and diagrams all work very well, and I simply could not have done it without the help of Everyman.

 

ICA: Final thoughts?

 

EC: Every chess book I own is based on a recommendation from a friend or colleague, so I’m hoping that Chess Progress can enter that stream.