This is a letter of recommendation for Flyn Penoyer as a chess coach.
When I told Flyn I was going to write this, he asked that I do it in such a way that you will get a good understanding of what Flyn does and what to expect.
My son Bryce met Coach Flyn at his school during an after-school chess program he taught there.
He came to me shortly after the program began and told me he really wanted to take lessons from Coach Flyn.
So, we invited him to come and do the first lesson – Bryce loved it. And we set up to do regular 90-minute weekly sessions.
As a dad, I found Flyn wonderful to work with, always open and always looking for ways to improve the quality of the lessons.
Young kids are not capable of guiding their own learning, especially if it is a subject as complex as chess. Flyn invited me to participate in the lessons whenever I wanted to – his goal being I would be able to help Bryce outside the lessons with that experience.
Coach Flyn explained the importance of learning the fundamentals of chess, tactics, endgames and basic strategy and his work with Bryce stayed laser focused on those subjects.
Bryce showed improvement nearly immediately. His uncle, who usually broke about, even started losing a lot more of the games and his online speed chess and tactics ratings doubled.
Flyn uses a “discovery” learning method where he rarely answers direct questions about things but forces the student through questions and clues to figure out the answer – he lets the kids do all the work and instructed me on things he sent how to do the same when I gave them to Bryce.
Though he is perfectly willing to work with kids that aren’t totally serious, he gives them homework every week and lets them decide how much work they will do.
I can’t recommend Coach Flyn highly enough – he’s great with kids and constantly gives more than he’s paid for in his own homework and as a resource for the child’s efforts.
Regards;
Dan Chapman