November 8, 2000

Coaches mindful of OM competition

Odyssey of the Mind seminar puts coaches to the test

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
       Helping kids think out of the box means learning to think in new ways yourself, new coaches for the Odyssey of the Mind competition learned Saturday.
      At a training seminar for coaches held at TBA, experienced OM coaches put 50 newcomers through their paces. Explaining the ins and outs of the program, including the five categories of competition, these veteran coaches talked about what judges are looking for, how to encourage kids to think on their own and to work as a team.
      "Kids need to know it's okay to make mistakes," said Karen Nielson, regional director of the competition for northern Michigan. "This competition is not about winning at all, that's the icing on the cake. The important thing is how much the kids grow."
      Some novice coaches came to the training as Odyssey of the Mind veterans, having been on teams when they were in school. Still, learning about the competition from the coach's view was completely different.
      "There's a lot more too it than I thought, so I'm concerned from that perspective," said Christine Welton, whose daughter will be on a team from the Grand Traverse Academy. "But I think it's going to be fun."
      Odyssey of the Mind includes children in age categories from first-grade to seniors in high school and sets them to solve problems in one of five areas: vehicle, technical, structure, literature classics and acting. Run totally by volunteers, teams form at schools or among friends, with one or more coaches guiding them as they tackle a problem in the area of their choice.
      With regional, state, national and world competitions looming in the spring, teams are already forming and getting to work on this year's problem. Meeting weekly for months, the coaches guide their charges and serve as a resource and motivator. They do not give answers but encourage students to think out of the box.
      "It is fun to be an Odyssey of the Mind coach and see what the kids come up with when you give them a chance to do something," Nielson said. "School is different, so often they have a specific goal in mind or a specific answer. Here, their solutions to the same problem are often totally different."
      After 12 years of coaching 15 teams, Tina Allen finds that Odyssey of the Mind has gotten into her blood. Guiding her three daughters to competition year after year, she has found that people either love or hate being an Odyssey of the Mind coach. If they stay past the first year, she said, they are hooked.
      "It does become your life, it is a huge time commitment but you deal with the kids on a different level," Allen said. "It's that working toward something, not just doing this to have fun but really working toward a finished product, that pulls you together and develops relationships that would not have developed in other ways."
      After so many years, Allen finds her coaching has made her a better parent. She recalled a time about three years into her coaching career that she visited her daughter's classroom where students were preparing a puppet show. She watched a boy struggle to put a piece of scenery up and his mother jumped in with a solution for him.
      She realized then that her Odyssey of the Mind training was a huge benefit.
      "All of a sudden a light bulb went off and I suddenly thought I would never do that anymore, give the answer," Allen said. "There is never a problem, whether in school or at home, that I will tell them what to do. You learn to ask the questions to make them think and the kids learn to trust their own decisions."