DESTINATION IMAGINATION

Grace Kazak | Designer | Be You-nique

For about 10 years of my life, I was in a school-based program called Destination Imagination. The program is for pre-K, K-12, and university students with kids forming teams to develop solutions to project-based STEAM challenges. Teams develop their solution to their chosen challenge over several months and present it live at tournaments. Challenges are designed to teach the creative process and team challenges are open-ended, allowing members to express themselves creatively and take full ownership of their solutions.

I began my journey in Destination Imagination when I was in the 4th grade. It was an adjustment to work with my teammates at first since we had to collaborate with little to no help from adults, besides some guidance on how to work as a team. At first, as young kids, we struggled with figuring out how to equally contribute to the task at hand and would all dip our toes into different areas of what needed to be done to complete the challenge. As the years went on, we became close friends and realized how to collaborate with our different skill sets. Our team was partial to the art/theater-based challenges and learned how to divvy up our parts in order to achieve our goals. I mainly focused on writing our script/story and creating art and costumes while others would create music, set/stage pieces, research, and whatever contraption we needed to fulfill our challenge’s requirements. It’s something I’m very proud to have been a part of, but I could not have done it without my teammates and all their diverse talents!

So far, I’ve learned from a lot of experiences, but this program was by far the most beneficial thing for me and gave me the ability to apply what I learned in everyday life. Learning to be unique has helped me acknowledge others’ individual strengths, as well as my own, and how everyone’s contributions make a difference as a team.

If you are interested in learning more about Destination Imagination, check them out on their website at destinationimagination.org

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