Students from St. John's Catholic School are gearing up for their trip to the Destination Imagination Global Finals in May in the team's first year of competition.
The Global Finals will be held May 19-24 in Knoxville, Tenn. More than 1,300 of the year's highest-scoring teams are expected to attend.
More than 16,000 people from 45 states, seven Canadian provinces and 13 countries attend the competition each year.
Members of the St. John's team that won first place in the state competition are Kiley Brown, fifth grade; Jackson Cate, seventh grade; Landry Cate, fifth grade; Collin Gallimore, seventh grade; Anthony Guevara, fifth grade; Graydyn Hardister, fourth grade; and Sierra Hardister, seventh grade.
Students, teachers and administration at St. John's began to explore Destination Imagination programs two years ago. The state Destination Imagination director, Mike Mitchell, visited the school and discussed the organization.
Destination Imagination encourages teams of students to have fun, take risks, focus and frame challenges while incorporating science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, the arts and service learning. The organization is the world's largest creative problem-solving program for kids.
Gina Cate, a parent of St. John's students, encouraged the school to look at Destination Imagination because of her past experiences with the programs. She also competed as a student in Odyssey of the Mind, a similar creative and problem-solving competition.
Cate was coached by her father in the competition, and she volunteered to coach the team when it began competing this year.
"I feel like I'm kind of continuing the legacy that I grew up with," Cate said. "And now I have the privilege of team-managing my kids and their friends."
The Challenge program is the most popular Destination Imagination program. Competitive teams choose one of six challenges for competition: Technical, Scientific, Fine Arts, Improvisational, Structural and Service Learning.
Students must solve problems in the competition, develop a skit and deliver a presentation to judges. The skit must connect with the challenge.
"It's a terribly fun program," Cate said. "It's really neat to see the kids be able to express themselves and do creative thinking and problem solving outside of the box and outside of the normal classroom environment."
St. John's Principal Angela Isaacs said she favors Destination Imagination because it does not rely on test scores to evaluate students.
The St. John's students voted to compete in the Technical category. The students said they were encouraged by the broad range of challenges in Technical.
The team built 16 containers and a mechanism to locate 10 hidden objects in the containers. The skit involved lost items from an assortment of celebrities, fictional characters and historical figures.
The students researched figures such as Si Robertson, Thomas Edison, Zeus, Taylor Swift, Leonardo Da Vinci, Dorothy Gale, Harriet Tubman and more. All of the figures live on the same street in the skit.
The regional competition in Texarkana in February marked the first competition for the St. John's teams. A non-competitive elementary-level team also traveled to the event.
The elementary students that competed were A.J. Divine, second grade; Madison Divine, third grade; George Drakes, first grade; Mary Drakes, second grade; Drew Nehus, kindergarten; Jake Nehus, pre-K; and Parker Rhodes, kindergarten.
St. John's won first place in Technical in Texarkana to advance to the state Challenge competition in Little Rock on April 5.
"We were feeling very confident, but at the same time we were feeling like a nervous feeling," Jackson Cate said.
"When we went in, we saw the Dunbar team with the big air compressor," Gallimore said. "That's when we started to get worried because they were going to shoot their stuff out of their boxes."
The team won first place at state to advance to the Global Finals in Knoxville to compete against teams from all over the world.
"We compete at the level of the oldest child," Cate said. "So we compete at the middle level, but our team of seven only has three middle school students. Four of them are elementary students, but we compete at the middle level.
"I feel like it's a great accomplishment for the team to have won first place at state competing against children that are much older."
The students are now tweaking their projects and adding more to the skit.
"We just want to make everything bigger," Gallimore said.
Students on the team thanked Gina Cate for her leadership and Mitchell for speaking to the school two years ago. Marianne Layne, Advancement director, said the parents should be commended for working with the team's schedule, including practices and brainstorming sessions multiple days each week.
"I think the kids deserve some thanks, because they gave up a lot of after-school hours," Isaacs said.
Fundraising efforts are underway to cover the costs of attending the Global Finals. The cost for the team to attend is approximately $900 including the entry fee, housing, food and transportation.
Multiple levels of sponsorships are available, including the Diamond level $2,500 and above. Other levels include Platinum, $1,000; Gold, $500; Silver $250; and Bronze $100.
A sponsorship for the fee of one student participant is $685. Shirt and fuel sponsorships are also available.
St. John's raised $345 in the first week of "Dress Down for DI Thursday." All students were allowed to dress how they wished by contributing $5 each to the fundraising effort.
Orange Leaf on Higdon Ferry Road will host a fundraiser May 1 from 3-7 p.m. to benefit the Destination Imagination team.
Local on 04/24/2014