Coaches

Below is an excerpt directly from the 2024-2025 Odyssey of the Mind Program Guide:

Coaching an Odyssey of the Mind Team

In OM™ the coach plays a limited, but Important, role. Each Odyssey of the Mind team must have at least one adult, 18 years of age or older, registered as its head coach. Having an assistant coach will lessen the demands assumed by one person. OM™ does not assign coaches. The coach of a team is determined by the membership organization.

Who Can Coach?

Coaches come from all professions and from all walks of life. Although teams must have the support of the member school or organization, coaches do not have to be teachers. Frequently, a child’s involvement in the program will generate the interest of the parents. Oftentimes, parents will start the Odyssey of the Mind program in their child’s school and assume a coaching role to get involved in their child’s education.

Role of the Coach

Coaches must remember that the Odyssey of the Mind is a “hands-on” activity for students and a somewhat “hands-off” for adults. It’s important that teams create their solutions without using the ideas and assistance of others. There is value in letting teams succeed and fail on their own merits, especially when achievement is rated on effort, as much as on results. The coach will offer guidance and encouragement, and teach team members how to explore possibilities, listen to others, learn from failures, and evaluate solutions effectively. They can teach the team skills, such as sewing, painting, drilling, etc., but not to direct the lesson to be a part of the solution. However, no one, including the coach, may give the team ideas or assistance in developing the solution to the problem. It is amazing to see what the teams can do on their own and, in the end, the coach will be proud of their team for doing it themselves. And the students will amaze themselves and build self-esteem from knowing they did it on their own.

The coach or coaches will provide supervision and handle logistics such as scheduling meetings, making sure paperwork is done properly, getting the team to competition, teaching them how to solve differences, and so on. They may be responsible for recruiting and selecting team members. The coach will make sure the team understands the limitations of its long-term problem and oversee brainstorming and spontaneous practice sessions. When team members get an idea, the coach or coaches can make sure they obtain the skills required to carry out that idea. The coach will provide moral support. And… if something goes wrong, the team might need to rely on the coach’s guidance to help them make things right without actually fixing the problem for them. The coach will make sure to read and re-read the problem and clarifications. The team members should be given a copy of the materials to ensure they understand the problem and how it will be scored.

Being a Coach

You, as the coach, can provide the experiences for your team to reap the full benefits of participation in OM™. You will find many exercises in the following chapters that will help you to teach critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills, but the program can provide much more than teaching students how to think: it augments the lessons taught in the classroom and allows students to apply what they’ve learned to different situations. In this time of budgetary cutbacks in the arts and other important areas, students can continue to learn art, music, creative writing, acting, and just about whatever else they’re interested in through incorporating those subjects into their long-term problem solution.

It is important that coaches recognize the wealth of opportunity that comes with coaching a team. Your time spent with the students will make a difference in their lives. The team will learn more from their time in OM™ than they imagined – and they will remember the good times they had in the process. And you, the coach, are the one to make that happen. Good luck, and congratulations on becoming a coach!