Charles, 6, watched as his father, Jon, worked on his game on Sunday morning.
Of all the reasons for a kid to take up golf, 6-year-old Charles might have one of the most unusual.
“His main sport is chess, and we thought we’d give him a break from that,” said his dad, Jon, when asked about signing Charles up for the Sunday morning Bridge Pioneers program and STEM Mini-Lab at The Bridge Golf Learning Center. In addition to being a nationally ranked scholastic chess player, Charles is fluent in Mandarin, practices Taekwondo, and plays soccer.
Teaching Professional Randy Taylor worked with Charlie during his Bridge Pioneers class.
As you might have guessed, his parents, Jon and Shih Hua, are paying close attention to their kids’ activities.
“We like to put them in an environment where they’re having fun and also learning,” Jon said.
The family first noticed The Learning Center after Charles’s swimming lesson (yes, he swims too) across the street this spring. They visited with our staff, and our mission to combine STEM with golf seemed like a great fit. Jon had played a little golf in the past, but it had been years. Once he and Charles signed up for lessons, Shih Hua wanted to try too. Now all three have made us part of their Sunday morning routine. (Sonia, their 3-year-old, is also a regular, but she hasn’t signed up for lessons yet.)
While Shih Hua took her lesson with Randy, 3-year-old Sonia stayed busy with an educational app.
Last Sunday, it worked like this: Jon arrived with Charles for an 8 a.m. lesson with Teaching Professional Randy Taylor. While Jon worked on his game with Randy, Charles practiced putting and watched his dad. At 9, Charles and one other student joined Randy for Bridge Pioneers, our golf program for beginners. At 10, Shih Hua came in for her lesson, with Sonia in tow. Jon kept an eye on Sonia during Shih Hua’s lesson, and Charles joined STEM Co-Teacher Tiffani Kolozian for some coding practice in our STEM Mini-Lab.
Charles worked on a coding exercise with STEM Co-Teacher Tiffani Kolozian.
Beyond having something for everyone in their family, Jon and Shih Hua chose The Learning Center because it was close to home and in the Harlem community, and they were impressed with The Foundation’s mission.
“It’s great to see the investment in such programs, and amenities being put back into our community and neighborhood,” Shih Hua said.
Jon, who grew up in New York and went to The Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, Brooklyn Tech and Cornell, now works at DBOX, a creative communications agency. He says he benefited from scholarship programs and other initiatives that helped him when he was young, and he was excited to see what The Bridge Golf Foundation was doing in Harlem.
“What the Foundation is doing is so important,” Jon said. “The more we put into our kids now, the better prepared they’ll be in the future.”