How about pep rallies for thinkers?

By Melissa O’Brien

Today, six dynamic competitors from Harrison High School in Cobb County will compete against challengers from around the world in the Odyssey of the Mind competition at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich. After months of preparation, trial and error, sportsmanship and calculation, the team already has achieved the honor of being selected as the first Georgia high school team to ever compete in two world events in the same year.

Yet the team left town for East Lansing this past weekend without so much as the shake of a pom-pom. No pep rallies for this team, no cheerleaders on the sidelines. Even though Harrison High has already won five Odyssey titles in previous years, this inconspicuous academic group has no glory banner on the high school wall.

While it may not be fair to juxtapose sports with academic clubs — I’ll be the first to admit that youth also benefit from organized athletics and the school spirit derived from them — it might serve us well to provide a little fanfare for clubs such as Odyssey of the Mind, too, especially when other countries such as China and India have soared ahead of us in education and innovation.

For more than 25 years, the Odyssey of the Mind program has taught k-12 students to think creatively. Five projects are offered every year — including one sponsored by NASA — that include the creation of a vehicle, a technical problem, the classics (history and literature), structural engineering and dramatics. Students have less than a year to brainstorm, blueprint, set design, script and construct everything that they will need to give an eight-minute presentation before a panel of judges — without help from teachers or parents.

The budget is limited, so Odyssey kids learn conservation. Coffee filters become costumes, clothes pins become cactus spikes and inside-out Coke cans become a suit of armor. Points are awarded for using the creative problem-solving process and thinking “outside of the box.”

What students take away from Odyssey of the Mind are abilities that our country needs as we try to solve some of our world’s biggest problems. Proficiency in engineering, architecture, marketing and public speaking are all fostered through programs such as Odyssey. Meet an “Omer,” as they call themselves, and you will find a confident, spontaneous thinker who will present ideas that even the most educated adults might not conceive of.

Daniel Finnegan, a former member of the Harrison team who has been in Odyssey since elementary school and who is now a landscape architect candidate at the University of Georgia, says that Odyssey gives students confidence and challenges them to try new ideas.

“One year, I saw a middle school team that had created a prosthetic arm out of random materials for a teammate without an arm,” he says. “You get to meet people from more than 20 different countries and 50 states and they are coming up with hundreds of different solutions to the same five problems. From the judges, you learn to be open to criticism and how to improve upon your ideas. I find that in college, I am able to present ideas to people without being nervous because I have been doing this for a long time.”

Finnegan says that he used to joke in high school that he had won five state championships and the most recognition he got was maybe a mention in the school newspaper. “A friend who won the state soccer championship once told me that while it was nice to win, the only thing he would eventually have years from now was the ability to kick a ball 50 feet. He told me the skills I have acquired through Odyssey will carry me throughout life.”

Imagine then, in the true “Omer” way, if schools celebrated the academic clubs as much as the sports teams. Instead of one team representing a school at Odyssey Worlds, envision four or five or 10. Think of the creativity it would spark and the inspiration it would give to the younger kids who like to make rockets out of toilet paper tubes. Imagine what one little pep rally or banner might do to help encourage a school full of thinkers.

Melissa O’Brien is a freelance writer who lives in Kennesaw.