Basketball coaches often talk about “playing the right way”. Execute sound fundamentals as an individual, cooperatively create and use space as a teammate, be heard and be polite, play hard and play clean, and so on. Winning is swell, but it really oughta take a back seat to playing the right way (in real life and beer commercials, winning is what matters most, which is a societal flaw).
Chess is the same way, but the difference is that most chess coaches think teaching kids to play the right way is drilling them in master practice. Master practice is the right way for masters, not kids in chess classes.
99 percent of chessplayers are not masters. 99 percent of children playing chess stop playing before the 6th grade. If I’m talking to 10,000 kids, I’m teaching them to — in basketball terms — press for 40 minutes, and run with every possession. Play in a fun way. Generate tactical situations in order to practice tactics (passive defensive play is for other chess teachers). Coordinating the pieces to create tactics is fun, and in that 1-in-10,000 case where the kid actually will become a chess master, that kid will have a better tactical foundation.
One of my students showed me a game he played in a summer chess camp last Friday (which was my birthday, and I was working in an office instead of teaching chess — go figure). His opponent played the way I want kids to play. My student won the game after his opponent blundered badly, but I hope our lesson impressed upon the kid that I’d rather his opponents played to grab loose stuff while leaving the pieces undeveloped.