June 2, 2023
The destination was Kansas City, Missouri. The imagination came from six Oaks Elementary students. The event – Destination Imagination Challenge Experience Global Finals 2023.
Oaks Elementary Destination Imagination team managed by Chelsea Headrick and Christina Michie got the experience of a lifetime at the end of May, competing in the DI Challenge Experience Globals as one of 52 teams from around the world.
Students Leah Lamb, Abigail Nixon, Maggie Avants, Darren Rivas, Celeste Gomez and Alayna Machete competed in the fine arts section “Flip the Script” and finished 22nd overall in the main challenge and fourth in the instant challenge.
“We were so proud,” Michie said. “The fact that they did that being a club that meets once a week after school for two hours, has to fundraise for everything and doesn’t even have a true ‘room’ to create their solutions scored that high compared to teams that have this as their class that is full of all the supplies they could need is amazing. The perseverance, dedication, creativity that they showed as well as great collaboration is something that any educator would be proud of.”
But the journey to Kansas City did come with some bumps in the road.
At the Regional DI Tournament, the Oaks Elementary team, which competed in the fine arts category, had their set completely fall apart. They persevered and acted out their play as if the set was there, even going through the steps of changing scenes without having a set to do it with.
“They did so well with their acting that they then had a team member win an award for their performance,” Michie said.
At the end of the competition, they were put into a drawing for a chance to go to the DI Globals Competition and were selected.
The Oaks Elementary DI team got to work making changes to their set while staying in budget and creating scenery using a technical device, rewriting the script to tell the story of Hansel and Gretel from the perspective of the witch.
Once in Kansas City, of course there was the competition portion, but the Oaks Elementary students were able to meet new teams from around the world.
“Then they were able to see students from China, Mexico, Ukraine, as well as all over the United States perform in different challenges and levels at Globals,” Michie said. “The best thing was that they were able to interact and learn from them.”
When it came to their turn to compete, the team was ready.
“They spent all that day practicing, adjusting their set and getting everything down to how they wanted to,” Michie said. “They even formed a relationship with a group of middle schoolers who became like their mentors from Lubbock. Competition day came and they went in and rocked it.”
As Michie reflects on the weekend and the group of students she got to work with for the year, the team became a “family” in what became an international and memorable experience.
“We are with each other in an experience that you don’t understand unless you go through it,” Michie said. “The fact that some of the students hadn’t even been away from their families before and we were trusted to take them, speaks to the relationship that is built. To see students use a part of their brain that is creative and problem solving with people they do not hang out with during the school day, is beautiful. We had 4th and 5th graders on the team. They worked so well together and showed what true collaboration could do. It was a true redemption, underdog story.”