Title
Proclamation recognizing the participation and acheivements of Destination Imagination Teams from Pflugerville.
Summary
Destination Imagination is a program designed to inspire the next generation of innovators and leaders. Each year teams are given a choice of challenges designed to foster students' creativity, courage, and curiosity, and enable student teams to learn and experience the creative process from imagination to innovation. Regional, state, and global tournaments allow the teams to showcase their solutions. The challenges include technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, improvisational, service learning, rising stars, and instant challenges. What’s unique about this program is that parents, coaches, teachers, and managers are not allowed to help the kids with the challenge solution in any way. The story is written by, and the props, costumes, stages, sets, and backdrops are designed and built by the teams. It is entirely a collaborative problem solving process.
The two Pflugerville teams advancing to global finals are the Legendary Apple Doom Skullz (LADS) from Pflugerville Middle School, and the Creative Crayons from Timmerman and Caldwell Elementary Schools. Since September, both teams have dedicated their afternoons, weekends, and school holidays to working on their projects. There have been many challenges and several failures along the way, but the kids are learning to pick themselves up and begin again.
The Pflugerville Middle School Team competed in and placed first in two different challenges, Project Outreach and Improvisation, at the Capital Region competition in the middle school level this year. They received the Torchbearer Award at the regional level for having an outstanding service project, and went on to place ninth in the Project Outreach Challenge and first in the Improvisation Challenge at the state competition this past weekend. Their first place standing in Improvisation allows them to advance to global finals in that challenge.
The Elementary team placed first at the Capital Region competition in the elementary level of the Project Outreach Challenge. They went on to place first at the Texas State Competition.
Both teams were honored at the state competition for having the highest Instant Challenge Scores in their respective challenges.
Pflugerville began with over 60 teams competing at the regional level and these are the last two representing their community at the highest level of this type of competition. This is the third time the LADS will be attending global finals since they competed in the Technical Challenge in both 2016 and 2017. This is the second time the Creative Crayons will be attending the global final competition for Project Outreach.
The teams are holding a Performance Showcase on Friday, May 11th at 6:00PM, at Timmerman Elementary, where they will present their performances to the Pflugerville community. The community is invited to attend the Showcase to see the teams in action before they head out to global finals.
Staff Recommendation
Presentation item. No action to be taken.
Drafter
Karen Thompson
City Secretary