Quick! Solve this: Build a tower in five minutes that is strong enough to hold a golf ball, using a limited number of specified household items. You have five minutes to plan, but no talking while building. Go!
That's the type of mind games issued to middle and high school students during a Destination Imagination tournament.
DI, as it is commonly known, is an international, curriculum-based, problem-solving program designed to promote creative thinking, teamwork, collaboration and communication among middle and high school student teams. There are currently 15 DI teams in Hamilton County schools -- 12 at Center for Creative Arts, three from Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences.
All are prepping for the Region 6 tournament, set for Saturday, March 7, at Center for Creative Arts. The regional competition already has 28 teams registered from East Tennessee, according to John Echols, CCA faculty adviser and team manager.
Each team accepts one of DI's seven challenges, which they prepare ahead of time in weekly after-school meetings. The seven challenge categories are: technical, scientific, structural, fine arts, improvisational, service-learning project and early learning (for schools with elementary teams.)
CCA seniors Keven Woods, Simone Edwards, Vindhya Rapolu, Rafiq Malek, Emily Lupo, Brianna Jones and Hanna Danielson took on the service-learning challenge. In it, teams must identify a community need then create a way to address it.
"Instead of going clich and doing recycling, we decided to use our arts background to make a difference," says Woods. "We're doing a performance teaching kids about peer pressure and self-image. It's a play that revolves around a rainbow color scheme."
Edwards says each team member chose a color, wrote a storyline using the color or color's symbolism, then created a coordinating costume. Jones compiled their stories into the play they'll present at DI for judges to score. In the weeks after the tournament, the seniors intend to take their show on the road to area middle schools.
At the tournament, every team also will be issued and scored on an Instant Challenge, brain teasers they must solve in minutes with no help from their faculty advisers. To turbo-charge thinking skills and to share tips on collaborating in a short amount of time, an Instant Challenge Workshop is being held at Creative Discovery Museum on Wednesday to prepare students for these puzzles.
"There are two types of instant challenges: performance or tasks," says Echols. "For example, in performance, a team might be given five minutes to plan a skit that takes place in a barn with instructions such as come up with a plot, story conflict, who's in the barn and why, and at least half of the team has to be humans, the others animals. A task challenge has to do with building something using a limited number of materials.
Center for Creative Arts student Colten Sedman, left, interjects his ideas on constructing a monster that will complete at least three tasks during an Destination Imagination competition. From left are Sedman, Bailey Holland, CCA team manager John Echols, Winston Decredico and Ruthie Beeland. Twenty-eight East Tennessee teams will gather for the regional competition on March 7."There is always a twist, or surprise, to each instant challenge," he adds. "Students might be told they have five minutes to plan, but only two minutes to touch their materials; or five minutes to plan, but no talking while building. Also, they can't be helped by their adult team manager."
Anyone who has watched the improv TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" knows its "scenes from a hat" requires actors to immediately come up with humorous responses to any of several scenarios issued by the host. That's the DI improv challenge for which the CCA freshman-sophomore team - Gabbi Adasime, Maia Disbrow, Jada Garza, Wesley Mercer, Emily Cass, Breniaha Womble and Channon Arden - are honing their wit. DI's Improv Games requires each team to perform three games chosen from a hat, with two minutes to prepare.
"You don't know what you'll get. The games might be Storytelling One Word at a Time, Dating Game, Film Trailer, Courtroom or Party Quirks," explains Gabbi, a freshman. "There's also street performance, which could be solo fiddling, statues, graffiti wall art or snake charmer."
To try to be ready for any challenge, the team has been rehearsing ideas in each category since September. Jada says the students' longtime friendship has been both a blessing and a curse.
"We all click really well, but not everyone is on the same page," explains Gabbi. "And you can't say 'no' to a challenge, that's the first rule of improv."
Participation on a DI team is voluntary. Each student pays a $50 fee to CCA, which funds team supplies and transportation fees. Parents who volunteer as team managers receive credit toward the volunteer hours required of every parent of a child in a Hamilton County magnet school like CCA.
The school's students list the benefits of DI as everything from "learning to think fast on my feet" to "building critical thinking skills" to "it looks good on my college resum."
But for seventh-grader Ruthie Beeland, it all boils down to sibling rivalry. Her brother, Hunter is a CCA junior and also on a DI team.
"My parents said this would be fun, but I want to show up my brother," Ruthie confides.
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.