The creative process--alive and flourishing in our kids
On Saturday, I spent the day down in Eugene watching my son's team and two other teams from our home education center compete in a Destination Imagination regional tournament. If you haven't heard about DI, just know that it's an amazing venue for kids to get together in teams to work on specific challenges by dreaming, talking, creating, having fun as well as working out differences amongst team members. They start early in the school year by picking a challenge and spending the next six months creating a presentation that has many components to it. My son's team has been together for six years now, and they've learned to work together well using their unique talents. They usually choose the technical challenge that incorporates building a vehicle that can propel itself. In addition, they have to make up a skit that incorporates the vehicle that has to perform specific jobs through the eight minute presentation.
On my son's team, each member brings their strongest talents as: a writer, a builder, an engineer, two computer software specialists, and an organizer. Of course, they cross over and learn to use many skills beyond their strongest talents. And they learn to work together to create something that none of them could create on their own.
Of course, watching my son's team makes me proud as a parent, but what I want to point out is that this is going on all over the country--kids are being encouraged to work together to create something on their own. In this time of political apathy, cut-backs in schools, economic uncertainty, etc. etc., it always thrills me to see what kids can come up with using their imagination. These kids have learned to think outside the box. Who knows where they'll go with the knowledge that they can use their skills and make a difference in this world!
Here's a picture of my son's team in performance. They had to build a vehicle that could drive as well as have a delivery system for products they had to make. As you can see on the vehicle, the delivery system they came up with is a rotating arm that brings products from one spot to another via buckets on hooks. The two guys in the front are doing the skit while the four guys (one hidden in the vehicle) in back are working with the vehicle. Their team name is DWP (Dept. of Words and Punctuation) and the product they're creating and moving is...punctuation! Hilarious skit!
