Elmwood Elementary's Odyssey Takes Them To Iowa (Maybe)

A pair of guppies, two mermaids and a great white shark work together to save the Chesapeake Bay.

That's the premise of the skit written by students that earned them the right to compete in the Odyssey of the Mind world championships.

But the students need to raise $9,000 within six weeks in order to make it to the competition.

According to the Odyssey of the Mind website, "Odyssey of the Mind is an international educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students from kindergarten through college."

The Elmwood team performed at the Maryland state regional competition in Bethesda earlier this month and their second place finish will send them across the country to compete against hundreds of teams at the Worlds competition in Iowa.

"Every year, teams choose from 5 different problems they would like to work on," said Cara Liggett, an Elmwood art teacher who founded Odyssey of the Mind at the school five years ago.

Liggett explained that her team chose to work on a problem called "Odyssey Angels" this year — they were challenged to create and present a performance where a group of students travel and encounter negative situations.

These “Odyssey Angels” change what they find and turn them into positive situations. On their journey, they help two individuals with different problems and help save an entire community from a bad situation. One Odyssey Angel cannot speak, and another has a special team-created power.

With those as their general guidelines, Liggett's team wrote a script about the Chesapeake Bay. Their characters include two mermaids, two guppies, a great white shark and the Chesapeake Bay herself. 

The first of the individual problems that the angels solve involves bullying.

The great white shark, played fourth-grader Thomas Pfarr, bullies a little guppy, played by third-grader Jamarr Watson, by giving him wedgies.

A guppy, played by fourth-grader Katie Cook, who has lost her voice because of pollution in the bay solves this problem by giving the great white his own wedgie.

Next, Pfarr's shark eats trash from the bay and has digestive problems. To solve this problem, a mermaid, played by fourth-grader Amaya Terry, uses her special power of the prune to cause the shark to ‘recycle’ the trash that was in his belly.

The Bay, a character played by fifth-grader Chrystal Udumukwu, has several funny and informative lines and the cast is rounded out by another mermaid, played by fifth-grader Mahnoor Kahn.

In the end, the pollution of the Chesapeake Bay is solved and the audience is asked to do their part to get involved in the cleanup of our precious Maryland treasure.

"These students have shown compassionate empathy for the Bay and truly want to help ... we are trying to determine a way that the kids could be a part of the solution to the pollution problem after we compete at Worlds," Liggett said in an email. "These 6 students are trying to make their community a better place to live."

Having succeeded in their goal of making the finals, the Elmwood team is now faced with a new problem: raising the funds to get them to Iowa.

Liggett told Patch they have about six weeks to raise an additional $9,000 in order to send the team to the competition.

"We already have $3,000 in the bank, but the cost to send 6 kids, 6 parents and two coaches to Iowa is $12,000," Liggett said. The team is planning a series of fundraisers—including a spaghetti dinner at the school on March 29 and a quarter auction at Rosedale Gardens on April 26—to help them meet their goals.

"We had Odyssey at my high school," said Amaya's mom Luz Terry. "I never realized it was a thing until she got involved—it's really cool; it teaches kids that they can be different and be rewarded for it."

"When this started, they were barely speaking out loud," said Janet Cook, Katie's mom. "It's incredible watching their self-confidence grow, and seeing them adapt. These guys blew the judges away."

Hopefully they'll have the chance to wow the judges again at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa late in May.

Those interested in contributing to the effort can mail donations to Elmwood Elementary School, 531 Dale Ave Baltimore, MD 21206. Checks can be made out to Elmwood Elementary School, with “OM Team” on the subject line. The school can also send a charitable donation reciept in return.