I am amazed by the talent our BFA students display both here at school and while competing in events outside of school hours. One of those activities is Destination Imagination (DI). While I know DI is an important component of our elective STEM offerings, I was never very clear about what they're actually asked to do at the competitions. Since I'm probably not the only one, I reached out to some of our DI leaders to get more information and am very impressed with what I've learned.

 

DI is an international, educational program that gives kids an amazing outlet for their creativity, while teaching them leadership, teamwork, positive thinking, project management and more. Teams of two to seven kids from kindergarten through high school solve one of six open-ended challenges (scientific, engineering, fine arts, service learning, improvisation or technical) in their own unique ways, and present their solutions at regional tournaments. Teams also solve an on-the-spot Instant Challenge at the tournaments, where they must think quickly on their feet and work together to solve a problem in around five minutes.

 

DI focuses on three main skills:

1. Teamwork: Learn to recognize one's own personal talents, skills and interests, as well as one's teammates talents, while developing a plan for maximizing team assets.
2. Creativity: Learn and use the "creative process" every day--how and when to take risks and how to overcome failure in a safe environment while developing humor.
3. Problem Solving: Develop a toolbox of skills and processes that work in a variety of situations, use current knowledge and skills to investigate new solutions, develop creative use of resources and skills that are available and accessible, recognize and explore unique opportunities and/or alternatives, and understand/learn about time management.

Last weekend, FIVE BFA Destination Imagination (DI) teams competed at the State DI competition! That's incredible and I know the entire BFA community is proud of their accomplishments. Each team spent countless hours creating solutions to their challenges and preparing scripts, props, costumes and structures. And, we can't forget the Team Managers who volunteered numerous hours facilitating and coaching their teams--without you, we could not offer this incredible program.

 

For the third year in a row, BFA will be represented at the DI Global Finals in Knoxville, Tenn., in May with a  record THREE teams representing our school. It's important to note, BFA has the largest representation of DI teams from one school in the state! More than 8,000 participants (approximately 1,500 teams) from 20 different countries will compete at DI Global Finals.

The BFA teams that qualified for DI Global Finals 2018 are as follows:

• First Place, BFA BEASTs (sixth graders), Unlikely Attraction (challenge), Middle Level

• First Place, Magnificent Mangoes (fifth graders), Drop Zone (challenge), Elementary Level

• Tristan Bettis, Rohan Mansingh, Aidan Murphy and Matthew Thiessen; Team Managers: Jessica and John Thiessen

• Third Place, Colorful Creative Kangaroos (fourth graders), Unlikely Attraction (challenge), Elementary Level

• Evan Heitman, Bryn McDermott, Caleb Olson, Téa Sunahara and Makenna Washeck; Team Managers: Amy and Jason Sunahara

The BFA teams progressing to Global Finals presented solutions to two challenges that they have been working on since last fall. To give you an idea of what's involved, listed below are a couple of this year's challenges:

• For Unlikely Attraction, who participated in this year's scientific challenge, DI teams had to explore scientific concepts used in amusement park attractions; design and build an attraction that uses three scientific concepts during its operation; create and present a story that features the attraction operating in an unlikely location; portray the unlikely location using sights and sounds; and create and present two team choice elements that show off the team's interests, skills, areas of strength and talents - all in under eight minutes and within a budget of $150.

• For Drop Zone who took on this year's engineering challenge, DI teams had to design, build and test a freestanding structure that can withstand impacts from dropped weights; tell a story about a sudden event with dramatic impact; design and create a visible or audible depiction of the story's sudden event; create and present two team choice elements that show off the team's interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents - again in under eight minutes and within a budget of $150.

With fourteen students headed to Globals, at a cost of about $1,500 EACH, the DI teams will need some help from our community. Be on the look out for information on how to help these students with their fundraising efforts.

Congratulations to all our state participants and good luck to our teams headed to the Global Competition.