On Saturday, February 27th, 2016, several students from Lawnwood Elementary participated and were well-represented during the Palms Region Odyssey of The Mind Regional Tournament at Suncoast Community High School in Riviera Beach. The 4th and 5th grade Gifted classes, under the guidance and supervision of their Odyssey coaches and teachers, Ms. Courtney Crooks and Mr. Robert Knapp, used their leadership skills, creative thinking, and problem-solving skills to produce several skits involving five various problems, as well as some spontaneous random-quick thinking to this event, The Odyssey of the Mind is an international educational program that is able to provide creative problem-solving opportunities for students from Kindergarten through college. Each team member was able to apply their creativity to solve problems that varied from building mechanical devices to presenting their own interpretation of some literary classics. Once entered in the competition, they then brought their solutions to a tournament on the local, state, and world level. Thousands of teams from throughout all of the United States as well as several countries around the world participated in this program.
This was Lawnwood’s first year participating in this event, but through the long hours of hard work, some manual labor, several after school meetings, Saturday get-togethers, and two fundraisers, all of this time and effort was well worth it.
There were 11 District elementary schools from St. Lucie County in attendance at the competition, and Lawnwood was able to place first in one category, second in two other categories, and third in another. Out of five categories, Lawnwood received recognition in four out of the five that were presented.
Lawnwood really showed off their Leopard Pride upon completion of this exciting learning opportunity. As a matter of fact, Lawnwood was the only elementary school from our District to win first place and only missed moving on to the state level by a few points. Upon completion of the event, teacher and lead Odyssey coach, Courtney Crooks and her assistant coach, Robert Knapp, were already making plans to gear up for the 2017 competition.
What a journey and what an odyssey it has been!
