Kids learn chess and life lessons from SPD detective
by TONYA MOSLEY / KING 5 News
Posted on September 22, 2011 at 3:36 PM
Updated today at 6:01 PM
Her students call her Detective Cookie, a name she earned years ago for her love of sweets, but Detective Denise Bouldin has figured out the way to teach kids in the Rainier Valley about life through the movements of the pieces on a chess board.
"Chess is like in the real world...you gotta be careful, you gotta think, you gotta make the right decision," she tells fourth graders at Van Asselt Elementary School. "Because if you do something too quickly something could happen, there could be consequences."
This will become a year long relationship of learning. And Detective Cookie gets right down to what's important.
"Maybe somebody wants you to join a gang or maybe somebody wants you to do something that's negative," she says. "Let's put that whole situation on the chess board."
Detective Cookie understands she's not only teaching them a game, she's also giving her perspective and life lessons.
"When I was growing up I did not like the police," she says. "I grew up in Chicago in the projects there was people that was giving back in those kind of ways that kept me off the street."
"It's kind of like this is your family and you have to try to protect them so nothing bad happens to them," says one student of his chess pieces.
Detective Cookie has much more on the horizon this year. She's starting a sudoku club, a knitting class and a book club at the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club.
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