The students around the lunch table leaned in, breathlessly awaiting the next move. At the last moment, Addie, a third grader, moved her hand from a pawn to a bishop. “Remember,” said Richmond Ampah, a member of the Hillhouse High chess club, “it has to go diagonal.”
The moment of high drama took place during the most recent installment of the Games Academy in the Celentano School cafeteria. Already the students, grades three through six, had lunched on hot dogs and soup. Now, all around the space, were heated games of Uno, Connect 4, checkers, and dominoes, as well as, for the first time, chess.
The Games Academy is the brainchild of New Havener Neil Richardson, who started the program in the early 1990s at Jackie Robinson Middle School while he was with the Board of Education.
“Kids were taking five or eight minutes to eat, and the rest of the time, they had nothing to do,” said Richardson, amid the lively chatter in the brightly lit space of the Canner Street preK-to-eighth grade school lunchroom.
It worked. With funding support from the Board of Education, Richardson welcomed, among other members of the community, police officers. “It was a way for kids to view them not as faceless uniforms that they might see as a threat, but as people who enjoyed games just like them,” he said. A few months later, Richardson was appointed a judicial marshal in New Haven Juvenile Court. For over two decades, the Games Academy was on hiatus.
Until last spring when, with the help of the Celentano administration and the Board of Education’s Danny Diaz, Richardson, now retired, got his program restarted.
As with previous iterations of the Games Academy, the 2018 City Spirit honoree recruited volunteers from diverse areas of the community, including, in addition to Ampah, Probate Court clerk Sharyn L. Grant; Rodney Moore, New Haven Community Foundation’s Healthy Start Fatherhood Coordinator; and Joseph Lambert Jr, a computer technician at Yale New Haven Hospital.
New Haven Fire Department inspector and investigator Jeff Taylor, another volunteer, looked up from a spirited game of Connect 4. “This is fun,” he said. “Plus it’s a good way for kids to learn to take turns, and also how to win and lose.”
The benefits don’t end there. Studies show board games provide a healthy distraction from worries, as well as a screen-free way to follow rules within the structure of a game where students know what’s expected of them.
“This is a very lively lunchroom, and after they’ve finished eating, there’s lots of lag time,” said Celentano Assistant Principal Lisa Pietrosimone. “This is about channeling our students’ energy, getting them interacting with each other in a positive way, and it’s working.”
At a nearby table, Michael Proto, another NHFD inspector and investigator, was engaged in an intense game of checkers. “Highlight of my day,” he said, allowing that he had given away a few of his tried-and-true strategies.
The hope, said Richardson, as he watched the checkers game, is that “some of the kids will meet these firefighters and say, ‘Maybe I can do this too.'”
Not just firefighters.
Over at Ampah’s table, Adesina DeYounge, Hillhouse’s chess team coach, observed his acolyte helping young Addie and her opponent navigate the board. He said he’d introduced Ampah to chess, and Ampah had gone on to win trophies at various tournaments in the state.
“They watch him, and if they take an interest in the game, they can see something they can pursue in high school and come with a solid foundation,” DeYounge said, during a lull as each competitor pondered their next move.
“Every move, every decision you make has a consequence, could be good, could be bad, but it has a consequence,” he said.
By then, Jessica Mackey, culture and climate lead and interventionist at Celentano, was announcing that the games were over. The kids heaved a sigh of disappointment.
“We’ll be back,” Ampah told them; according to Richardson, there are two more dates planned for December and more for 2026, as well as hopes for a citywide Games Academy tournament and a state chess tournament if he can secure a sponsorship.
“Can’t wait,” one said, as she followed her fellow students back to their classrooms.
