Educators, have you ever had a real genius in class? What made him or her so smart? When I was

student teaching, I had a work-study gig at a wraparound program in my city. It was half-tutoring,

half-day care for students that needed a place to go between that time when school ended,

but before their parents got home. While it was mostly populated by middle and high school

students, there were a handful of very young children as well, five to six years old. One very little girl.

She couldn't have been older than six, was probably five, approached me with a box of chess.

She didn't know how to play, but said her father played and she wanted to learn how. I'm not a

chess expert, but I've played a good amount of times and read a few books, and I can beat my

friends or a hard computer. To clarify that, I'm talking about the hard setting on my phone.

It's about 1500 ELO. I'm somewhere above that, but probably not by much. I met with this little girl for about 30 minutes every day.

In two days, she understood all the rules and could play competently.

At the end of the week, she tied the game in a stalemate.

At the end of the second week, I never won again.

Turns out she was the daughter of a professor at my college, and he was an internationally ranked chess player.

When I ran into him, he couldn't thank me enough for teaching his daughter chess,

as his wife had issued a decree that he wasn't allowed to teach or play or mention chess around

their daughter. Understandable, didn't want to pressure her or discourage her. Chess was in

these people's genes, man. I teach a university-level writing course for people who typically aren't in writing

heavy majors, math, science, etc.

It's hard to make a 100 in a writing course for anyone,

because even great writers do something wrong in papers sometimes.

A missing citation, argument could be more nuanced,

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