Four teams of students from Lewis-Arriola Elementary School headed to Durango on Saturday, March 1 to attend a regional creative challenge, and its two competitive teams won in their respective divisions.
The two other teams, though not technically competitive, had “fantastic performances,” said Alison Robinson, a fifth grade teacher at the school and liaison for such teams.
The challenge in Durango was part of something called Destination Imagination, which defines itself as a community that’s centered on student-led creativity. It offers this creative space, which it holds is “a system of learning that is at the root of innovation,” with a choice of challenges.
The challenge can be technical, scientific, improvisational, engineering, fine arts or service learning-based, and they’re global: There’s pre-K, kindergarten through high school and university-level students competing across 36 U.S. states, seven Canadian provinces and 24 countries.
“It’s a really empowering process,” Robinson said. “It teaches them critical thinking, problem-solving and how to collaborate with a team.”
It’s the second year the school has participated.
“There’s a need for creativity,” she said.
Plus, it’s a small school – with one class per grade level – so it’s “expanding their teamwork skills,” having first graders work with kindergartners, and vice versa, she said.
To prepare for regionals, the teams at Lewis met once a week for an hour and a half after school starting in December. They “were ready to go by March,” said Robinson.
The two competitive teams were made up of five to seven kids from kindergarten to fifth grade. One team chose the scientific challenge, which prompted students to “tell a story about a character who figures out they are not alone on a planet.”
The other team was improvisational, and challenged to “tell a story about a character traveling between two locations … who is trying to find something and a detour causes an unforeseen change in the plan.”
To tell the stories, they made costumes, developed characters and a plot.
“It’s neat to see kids come out of the woodwork,” Robinson said. “They have so many ideas and thoughts to share, and this is a creative space to do it.”
Since both teams won at regionals, they’re invited to compete at the state challenge in Denver next month, said Robinson.
One team is set to go, and they’re working on financing to send the other team. If they win in Denver, they could go to the global competition in May.
The two noncompetitive teams that participated were part of the Early Learning Challenge, which is reserved for preschool through second grade.
Their prompt was to “tell a story about a character who is learning about one kind of weather for the very first time.”
Robinson underscored the student-led approach to the whole challenge, and said that she and other parent counselors act as “guard rails,” and guard rails only.
“The creative process is important,” she said. “Destination Imagination does an amazing job of getting kids to take the reins, and the skills transfer into the classroom.”
At Lewis, there’s only an elementary program. All elementary-aged students are welcome to join, though they’re limited by how many parent volunteers they get. Robinson said that, as it stands, there’s a waiting list to get in.
