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Born in 1964 and one of eight children, Salome had grown up in the Philadelphia projects. Identified as a gifted child in the fourth grade, his mother and teachers pushed him to take advantage of his educational opportunities.
He chose to teach because he felt that was the way to do the most good. Until he took additional courses and passed his certification test, Salome did substitute teaching during the day and worked nights for PRISM-a sports channel. His first substitute work was at Strawberry Mansion High School-an inner-city, black school. That's when he knew he belonged in the inner city.
Salome returned to school to earn a masters degree in education. After certification, a school district administrator offered him several positions and said of Vaux Middle School, "They haven't been in the news lately and for Vaux, that's good news."
Salome chose to teach at Vaux.
He stopped fights and improved discipline. The kids realized that he cared, and he soon became a father figure and mentor.
Two years later, Salome and his mother opened the Saturday Academy in her home, where Vaux kids studied and got their grades up.
He also coached basketball, but he dreamed of better non-sports programs to help kids, so he reactivated the school's chess club. In the 1970s they had won seven consecutive national championships.
As Salome taught chess, he showed them how to apply that analytical ability to other subjects. He recruited girls on the team, something that was quite rare. After a year, the players competed in their first chess tournaments. Because the children didn't know they couldn't win, they played extremely well and beat students who were white, affluent, had been coached by experts, and had played most of their lives.
Salome roused the community to provide funds so the team could travel. In their first competitive year, the team reached the city semifinals and placed third in the state championship. The Vaux kids shone in the Pennsylvania Scholastic Championships by defeating high school level players.
In February 1997, at Parsippany, New Jersey, the team won a division title-scoring the largest upset in thirty years-by defeating an expert level player as well as a top team from Bucknell University. They received an award for achieving the largest upset in terms of age difference at the tournament.
In April 1997, at Knoxville, Tennessee, they won the national championship. The same year they received eleven trophies in the U.S. Open in Orlando and were featured in a TV show on the UPN network, Kids Are Paramount.
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