I choose to stay

I Choose to Stay

Salome Thomas-EL grew up in the inner city of Philadelphia to become a teacher and principal with an unwavering commitment to the mentoring and education of inner-city youth.

By Jennifer Chase Esposito
October 2008

Success through Chess

Thomas-EL ’s teaching days were also spent in special needs classrooms, the discipline in which he earned his master’s degree. “I really made that my mission—to help move kids out of special needs,” he says, quickly adding, “Smart’s not something you are, it’s something you can become.”

So began what has become his claim to fame: world recognition as the coach of eight National Chess Champions. “Chess for me was a way to teach students,” he says. “I started teaching special ed through chess.” Vaux had a chess team in the ’70s and ’80s, when chess-playing kids had Bobby Fischer aspirations. But Thomas-EL knew that revamping the program would have greater ramifications for his inner-city students. “There’s a large achievement gap but an even larger exposure gap,” he says. “Two-thirds of the trips inner-city Philadelphia students have taken are within a two- to three-mile radius of here.”

Thomas-EL would take them to national championships in faraway places— and win—year after year. Today he sits on the board of America’s Foundation for Chess (AFC), a group that works with superintendents and boards across the country to implement chess programs in their own districts.Thanks to Thomas- EL’s passion and a voracious weekend and summertime speaking schedule that takes him to schools across the country, AFC hopes to make programs available to every second- and third-grade student in the United States.

“We’re not teaching our students to become chess champions, but to get them to use their brain matter,” he says. Thomas-EL considers his chess programs to be among his crowning achievements as an educator.

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