Illinois Destination ImagiNation Joins
Chicago Science in the City

ILDI seized the opportunity recently to join the Chicago Mayor’s Office and the Chicago Public Schools in planning and celebrating a ten day, Science in the City festival.   Destination Imagination was well represented at the Daley Plaza and Garfield Park Conservatory offering Instant Challenges for visitors of all ages.  Other participants at these events included Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, University of Chicago, Fermi Research Laboratory, First Robotics, Lego NXT, Science Olympiad, the Field Museum, the Peggy Notabert Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Shedd Aquarium, U of I-Chicago, et al…

1. As part of this partnership, the Museum of Science and Industry offered their entire Western Pavilion for a Destination ImagiNation event on opening weekend for their Star Wars exhibit: Where Science Meets Imagination.  On Oct 6, ILDI staged a DI eXtreme tournament for 11 High School and University teams and a “super-sized” Instant Challenge event open to the public.  In six hours, they hosted hundreds of people who created paper bridges that supported weight, designed devices to move beach balls and arranged mazes to move balls around obstacles.   After five months of effort, what did they accomplish? They:
   
   
2. Engaged many people of all ages in fun, creative, problem solving situations.
   
   
3. Talked with hundreds of people from IL, CA, WI, IN, England and New Zealand.
   
   
4. Emphasized the school curriculum base for all of the challenges and underscored the innovation skills that are being developed by participants.
   
   
5. Recruited 7 new teams from High Schools who had never done DI before.
   
   
6. Interested 4 other High Schools who now want information on future events.
   
   
7. Rallied more than 100 enthusiastic volunteers, veterans and novices, who welcomed, hosted, appraised, explained, encouraged and schlepped.
   
   
8. Played with 5 school groups who had never heard of DI. Some are now interested in launching programs.
   
   
9. Forged strong relationships with the Officer of the Department of High School Teaching and Learning, Acting Director of the Office of Math and Science- Elementary Schools, and the Science Manager for the Department of High School Teaching and Learning.
   
   
10. Stirred interest in DI by the Chicago Public Schools After School Matters Program who has asked them to present to their leadership.
    
    
11. Positioned our sponsors, 3M and the Midwest Dairy Council, with the Science in the City Sponsors, Motorola, Boeing, Mac Arthur Foundation, Abbott Labs, Baxter Pharmaceuticals, Takeda, Astellas Pharmaceuticals and CVS/Caremark.
    
    
12. Became the only organization invited to stage a booth at the Teacher institute hosted for 750 Chicago Public School Teachers at the Museum of Science and Industry
    
    
13. Accepted the invitation from the Chicago Chamber of Commerce to become a partner in the Innovation Now Conference in Chicago.
    
    
14. Strengthened relationships across all three Illinois Regions, with DI partners in Indiana, with the DI global team of IC Challenge Masters, Marketing and Program Development staff.

AND THEY HAD A BLAST DOING IT!!!!

We are pleased that Laura Liskey-Cole is the newest member of the DII Program Team.  She will be serving as the training coordination for our Flagship program.  

Laura Liskey-Cole is a native Virginian who began her undergraduate studies at the College of William and Mary and, after earning her BA and MA, completed post-Masters level coursework at Virginia State University.   She has been involved in creative problem solving since 1984, serving as an Affiliate Training Director, Regional Director, Affiliate Board member, Affiliate Challenge Master, Challenge Writer, and International Challenge Master.  Laura is accredited by the Center for Creative Learning, Inc., in CPS 6.1 and VIEW.  She has been published in a number of professional journals, newspapers, community newsletters, and is a co-writer of CCL's Creative Problem Solving course on the Internet!  In her spare time, she enjoys "Cowboy Action Shooting." with her husband (and committed DI volunteer) "Tensleep Bill," and she’s still trying to teach her chocolate Lab Ellie to "fetch”.

Laura is looking forward to building on an already strong foundation as she revises and develops training materials for the Flagship Program.  She looks forward to helping the Affiliate Training Directors support their ADs and RDs by providing consistent, quality training for TMs, Team Members and Appraisers in all our affiliates.

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Why Do Kids (and adults) Do DI?
By Jennita Speicher

I have had parents and teachers ask me over the years why kids like to spend so much time “DOING” Destination ImagiNation.  There are other places where they can practice creativity, there are other arenas for competition, and there are other ways to spend time with their friends.  My belief is that the prohibition of outside interference is the key.  This fundamental rule of DI, the rule that says NO person other than team members may have a part in the development of the team’s solution is the key to understanding the attraction kids have to DI. The adults in the program from managers, to tournament directors, to appraisers all respect the team’s right to own their solutions to the challenges. 

The idea that the team owns the solution sets up what might be the most important and longest lasting outcome of being part of Destination ImagiNation, the relationship between team members and their team manager.  In all reality the folks that we call team managers are much more than that term brings to mind.  They are MENTORS in the best sense of the word.  The hours spent studying the challenges, collecting materials, resolving conflicts, laughing and crying together builds relationships.  By the end of the DI season the team and their manager/mentor have a relationship that is more like family than anything else. 

A few years ago Mata Plumb, who sadly passed away this year, sent me an email that stated this astounding and revealing fact.  She said, “Remember to tell team managers that they might possibly be the only adult in this child’s life who is not telling them what to do.” When she told me that, I started thinking about the relationships that I had enjoyed over the years with team members.  That was the difference!  I was able to build up the team members, to empower them to do things that they never thought possible, without interjecting my opinions on how to do it. 

I will list a few of the memorable kids I have had the pleasure of mentoring. There was a girl who initially was very shy and didn’t like to speak in public, but by the end of the season, she was Rob Parker the host of a famous television show in the skit.  There was the boy who when the principal gave his team a check as a donation pulled a pre-written acceptance speech out of his pocket.  The principal was speechless. He wasn’t used to dealing with self sufficient kids.  There was the boy who was so excited to travel 60 miles from home that he purchased souvenirs for his parents. There was a girl who was able to eat in a Japanese Restaurant as a celebration with her team.  We found out later that she had never before eaten in a restaurant with printed menus.  These seem like simple things but they were all important to the child at the time and we were privileged to celebrate these small victories with them.  One boy allowed me to see his application for a scholarship where he stated that the activity he enjoyed the most was Destination ImagiNation because it was through DI that he learned that there is always more than one answer to any question.  If something fails, you just have to look for another way. 

The kids who participate in Destination ImagiNation and the adults who mentor them through the process as team managers are in many ways just like participants in other competitive activities.   They select their Challenge; they work to achieve it and hope to win by scoring more points than other teams.  The difference is this, in the process called Destination ImagiNation no matter who earns the most points at the end of the day EVERYONE WINS because the relationships formed in the process will last a lifetime.