2021 Chess Educator of the Year

Jerald Times To be Honored as Chess Educator of the Year

Jerald Times, a renowned chess educator from New York, has been named the 2021 Chess Educator of the Year by the UT Dallas Chess Program. At the March 9 event, he will be speaking on Closing the Gap in Scholastic Chess.

Times learned how to play chess at age 11 by reading books, entering free tournaments and playing the hustlers in St. Nicholas Park. He became the Harlem Chess Champion at age 14 and, in 2002, he was designated Chess Master. Later that year, Times’ 2400 rating made him the sixth-highest ranked Black chess player in the world.

He loves teaching, and even more, he loves to bring a chess program from good to great. In 2010, he was recruited to lead a team in a South African Township that, decades after the end of Apartheid, remained severely segregated and under resourced. Times did so well with his Township team that he was hired to coach the national South African team at the All-African Games before he returned to the U.S. to work at Dalton.

Times recently was the director of chess at the Success Academy in New York, where he wrote the K-8 curriculum and collaborated on a nationwide recruitment model. Prior to that, he spent six years coaching one of the country’s top chess programs at the Dalton School.

Times also is an accomplished and published poet. Early in his career, Jerald worked with the Teacher’s and Writer’s Collaborative and taught poetry to students of all grade levels. While there he organized poetry readings in homeless shelters and drug rehab programs that resulted in poetic pamphlets. He often has run holistic chess programs that include storytelling, music, tai chi and chess.