For seven Woolwich Central School students who will be traveling to the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals in Iowa this spring, creativity, quick-thinking and teamwork have been their recipe for success.
Odyssey of the Mind, an educational, problem solving competition, is currently offered to students in kindergarten through college, and requires teams to creatively tackle a number of artistic and technical challenges for regional and statewide competitions.
This year, Woolwich fifth graders chose a challenge called “Stack Attack,” which requires students to build a structure made only of balsa wood and glue that weighs 15 grams or less, and is strong enough to bear a number of weights.
As challenging as that may sound, it was more than doable for these students who crafted a 13.6-gram structure that supports 95 pounds of weights.
“We’re trying to build one that supports even more,” participant Natalie Emmerson said.
In addition to design and construction work, students are also required to incorporate a creative skit into their performance while weights are being placed on the structure.
Dean Emmerson, who coaches the team along with Courtney Keefe, described it as a “sort of a combination of early pre-engineering meets arts and performance.”
“For the skit, we chose the ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and made a bridge out cardboard boxes and draped a dark green sheet over it,” student Hazel Smith said. “We had (paper) goats on sticks … and when they got the answer wrong, they would put a weight on the structure that we were trying to crush. And when they got it right, they would raise a flag and the weights would come off.”
“‘Attacking the stack’ is when you remove all the weights except for the crusher board which is a 15-pound weight that doesn’t count for any points,” Natalie clarified.
While both Dean and Keefe serve as team coaches, they said their roles are more so to “keep them safe and describe the problem, but then after that, it’s them.”
“The kids really drive what they wanted to do,” Dean said. “They came up with the skit idea and modified it themselves to make it their own and made their own props and how the sequencing was going to work.”
The students were also quick to chime in that “working together” was something they enjoyed the most about the program, though it took some growing.
“At the beginning of the year, personally I didn’t feel like we were a team,” Smith said. “And now I feel like we’re a team.”
Dean said the turning point had been when the students had reflected on a recording of themselves working together, realizing that “we weren’t really that nice to each other.”
“It’s just a lot of fun to watch them progress over time and to see how they approach a problem,” he said. “But also there is a lot of laughter and they have a lot of fun.”
“It’s been great to see them mature so much,” Keefe added.
In addition to practices, the students have also been busy fundraising for their trip to Iowa, which is expected to cost around $12,000 for travel, food and lodging expenses.
The students are currently organizing bottle drives, coin collections and T-shirt sponsors, as well as writing letters and preparing presentations to potential donors to help fund their trip. As of Tuesday, $1,415 had been raised so far on their GoFundMe page.
For the students, who recently sported matching pink T-shirts that read “We Love Problem Solving,” their outlook is rosy, as getting to worlds was another challenge they would overcome together.
More information can be found at facebook.com/WoolwichOdyssey. To donate, visit gofundme.com/WoolwichOdyssey.
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