Forty two Columbus School´s students are preparing for a new year of Destination Imagination by selecting new challenges to develop creativity, and prepare for an upcoming national tournament.

Destination Imagination is an extracurricular weekly class given by the school, its goal is to develop creativity and collaborative problem solving through a challenge. Students will have this week to decide what challenge to work on for the whole year.

“It’s a program for kids to learn how to work in groups. They also have to be creative, they have to be able to adapt, create and think out of the box. This program empowers kids to do all of that,” Jordi Tur, Destination Imagination Coordinator, said.

Students involved really enjoy it because they choose the challenge to work on. Groups can choose between technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, improvisational or instant challenges to work on.

“We have some options regarding what we want to work on, last year my group chose mystery, I think it was the most exciting one,” Gabriel Gutierrez, Destination Imagination student, said.

Once each group chooses a challenge, they will develop a presentation on it until the national tournament in May. A challenge from last year was developing a skit in which students had to find a color, which had totally disappeared from earth.

“Last year in the fine arts challenge the students had to create a story in which they did not know what green was, it did not exist, they had explore to find the color again” Tur said.

The selection of the challenge is complex and requires deep thought to choose properly. Group leaders show videos of each challenge to the students, they discuss them  together and then decide for which challenge to go for.

“Before the selection process the team manager gets to know the students and see what they are good at. You have to know your kids, their strengths and weaknesses and then decide according to the kids abilities,” Tur said.

Students will need to choose properly as the success on the national tournament heavily relies on a challenge that suits the team.

“Electing the best challenge is crucial, as it motivates you to do an excellent job and determines how entertaining the process will be,” Gutierrez said.