As I have mentioned before I am coaching an Odyssey of the Mind (OM) team of 3rd, 4th and 6th graders from my daughter's Elementary School. This past weekend, the Thomas Jefferson High School OM Team hosted a Spontaneous Problem Tournament. For those of you unfamiliar with OM, a Spontaneous Problem is one where the team get a problem. They have 2-4 minutes to think about it and work out a solution and then 2-4 minutes to execute. As you can image, a lot can go wrong in 4-8 minutes when dealing with Elementary grade kids. I am happy to report that nothing bad happened to our team. In fact the kids did much better than I anticipated. When we did practices at my house, some of the kids had a tendency to freeze under the pressure. None of them even flinched during the real deal. They worked together, remembered the lessons that they learned during practice, were creative and had fun. I was so very proud of them. Additionally, at least one parent from each kid stopped by and saw what they are doing. I think that some of them were amazed at how well there children did also.
I have always been interested in teaching. Experiences like this just strengthen that desire. Unfortunately my big drawback is the pay. I know that I am not going to get rich in the military and enjoying my job is very important to me. I know that teaching would be very rewarding, but I don't know how I can take a teaching job knowing that I've got two kids to put through college. I can already see how hard it is going to be when I leave the Air Force. I don't want to have to become and adult and figure out what I want to be when I grow up!!!
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