Challenge: Destination Imagination

Hadley Junior High team to carry Québec banner at world finals  

 

Laurent Robillard-Cardinal

It was unusually quiet, Friday afternoon, January 23, outside Aylmer’s Symmes Junior High / D'Arcy McGee High School complex. Two hundred youths were focusing their energy inside the school for the Western Québec School Board’s (WQSB) 5th annual “Destination Imagination” competition.

The 200 students, from 17 schools across the WQSB territory, including Rouyn-Noranda, powered up their brain energy inside as they competed in Destination Imagination, the largest creative problem-solving and critical-thinking challenge program in the world.

The volunteer-led program put students to the test with fun and engaging challenges, all with a dramatic component, as an after-school collaborative program to teach and stimulate teamwork and innovation. The goal is for students to explore the creative process “from imagination to innovation, using inquiry-guided team-based learning techniques”. The entire exercise should give participating students a competitive advantage in the workforce of the future.

On the final day, January 23, hundreds of students came to Aylmer to demonstrate their skills in developing innovative solutions to complicated challenges, as appraisers evaluated each team. As in previous editions, the groups were asked to devise their solutions to the problems, some of which were assigned in October. The groups which fared better obtained a noteworthy prize during the closing ceremonies held inside the school gymnasium. More than a dozen prizes (including one for best hat) were awarded.

WQSB chairman James Shea announced the winners of the secondary level challenge; they will next represent Québec in Knoxdale, Tennessee, at the “Global Finals” in May 2015. Thirty countries will send teams.

The 2015 winning team from Hadley Junior High is composed of Malia Bird, Isaac Bunge, Laura Hébert, Sophia Jensen, India Joyce, Rosalie Létourneau, and Evan Wolfe, with Karen Piercy and Tracy Ludmer as coaches. Their project included a robot boss who helped guide students during their virtual journey to Egypt to recover a stolen painting.

Under the guidance of 38,000 volunteers, more than 200,000 students worldwide participate annually in the 21st century skills program.