Archive: Around Town

Last Saturday (3/4) five teams traveled from Lansing to Chenango Valley High School to compete in the region's Odyssey of the Mind (OM) competition.  OM is an international program that challenges students with creative problem-solving.  Students work in teams, doing all the work of solving the problems in skits they write with props they build.  Thousands of students from Kindergarten to college age participate every year in the U.S. and up to 25 other countries.


This year Lansing sent five teams including two 5th grade teams and one each from 6th, 8th and 9th.  "There has not been a High School team in a long time," says Cathy Moseley, who coordinated the event for the Lansing teams.  High School math teacher Kimberly Smith was the facilitator for the team.  "A number of students who had done it during the middle school years wanted to keep going, and asked Mrs. Moseley," she says.  The team was made up of Max MacKensie, Peter Stammer, Brendan Hammond and Ryan Cluett.


Indeed, this illustrates the students' self-motivation that is a big part of participating in OM.  Teams are given a problem and a budget and are challenged to solve it in a clever way.  The High School team solved the "Jungle Bloke" problem:  "Teams will create and present a performance about a Bloke, a person who has the ability to talk with and understand animals from a jungle. Part or all of the performance will take place in a jungle selected from a list. The animals will tell the Bloke about a problem that exists there and get the Bloke to help. The animals will also help the Bloke in some way. The Bloke will convince someone else that he has the ability to talk with the animals. The presentation will include an original song and dance."

The High School team's skit dealt with an elephant that could not count.  "The monkey asked for five pieces of fruit and the elephant couldn't get the number right," explains Smith. "The Jungle Bloke called upon Stephen Hawking to help teach the elephant how to count.  It was a great group of kids."


In the Tech Challenge the 8th Grade team had to create and present an original performance that included the use of a technical device that extends into different areas to move items.  Robin Presthus, Ben Veaner, Kate Schuttenberg, Tyler Sherwood and Martin Keefe came up with a humorous skit that included an impressive looking crane that moved merchandise by picking it up with a magnet and depositing them into a "store."  

Unfortunately the fishing line that operated the magnet broke, adversely affecting their score.  But the judges were encouraging.  "They thought our skit was good and they liked our props, said Presthus.  "They said it looked like we spent a lot of time working on them."

Schuttenberg wrote the skit, and the others edited it.  "The skit went well," she said.  "We had to improvise a lot, because we kept forgetting our lines."  The team's facilitator, Steve Reukauf, has been working with kids in OM for 12 to 13 years.  "The kids come up with all the ideas," he says.  "The facilitator is not supposed to guide them in any way.  They're supposed to do all the work and all the planning and concepts.  I'm supposed to get the materials, provide the place for them to work and show them how to use machines if they need to make something."


Brenda Mead facilitated the 6th grade team of  Luke Schaeffer, Jacob Ryan, Paul Giannelis, Jordan Stammer, Cody Van Houten, Caroline Prybyl, and Victoria Katz.  They solved the Ancient Egypt problem that had to include 5 artifacts, a structure and a plot twist.  Many of the teams used time travel with kids from 2006 travelling to ancient Egypt.  The Lansing team sent their Pharaoh and his servant forward to our time where they were confronted with such modern wonders as subways and cell phones.

Teams also competed in a spontaneous challenge.  "They'll go into a room and be presented with a verbal or hands on problem that they have to respond quickly to," explains Reukauf.  "For example it might say something like 'tell us something that is part of a whole.'"

By Saturday evening the scores were posted on the Broome/Tioga County BOCES Web site.  But Moseley says the process is more important than the competition.  "It's an important outlet for kids, because of the creativity.  The whole procedure is a process.  The competition is just a short little piece of it," she says.  Presthus summed it up, " It was a lot of fun."

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