Submitted by Destination Imagination
Last weekend, Bedford MA Destination Imagination (Bedford MADI) held its annual Instant Challenge Medley at the John Glenn Middle School.
“It was a great community-building event for the parent volunteers and students,” said Eileen Feldman, one of the event organizers.
“It’s one of the best days of the year and my favorite part of Destination Imagination,” said Christie Martin, another parent on the event planning committee, along with Kym Bullough and Jenny Stewart. The event was supported by a grant from the Bedford Cultural Council.
A little more than 100 school-aged Bedford residents – students from Bedford Public Schools, home school, and out-of-district broken down by age into 20 teams of three-to-seven students – are participating in Destination Imagination as an extracurricular activity during the 2023-2024 school year. Bedford has one of the biggest D.I. teams in Massachusetts this year.
A unique part of the Destination Imagination program is that the kids run the show. Destination Imagination is a worldwide team-based STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) problem-solving competition for students from kindergarten through college age. All of the ideas, planning, research, engineering, and construction of a team’s solution must be completed without input or influence from adults and non-team members.
Shraddha Sharma has two children in their first year in Destination Imagination. Sharma attended Bedford’s I.C. Medley event as the manager of the fifth-grade team – “The Black Mambas.” “It was great to see young minds come together with an infectious enthusiasm and energy. We as new team managers were really amazed by kids’ creativity and spontaneity, ” said Shraddha.
As part of the program, students work for six-to-eight months outside of school to solve an original technical “central challenge” that will be presented and scored at tournaments in a short theatrical presentation that includes engineering, research, scenery, costumes, and props. At the tournaments, teams also compete in an “Instant Challenge” that accounts for a quarter of the competition points.
During an Instant Challenge (I.C.), teams are scored on engineering skills, improvisational and acting skills, time management, creativity, and teamwork. An I.C. may be an improvisational skit to perform, a device to create with limited materials, a bridge or a tower to build, a message or instructions to convey to teammates, or some combination of techniques and objectives. The I.C. is scored while teams perform under a five to eight-minute time constraint in front of a panel of appraisers.
Charlotte Feldman, a student member of the fifth grade The Star Streakers team said, “Our team always managed to talk before and after each challenge so everyone could know what everyone thought about the previous challenge and know what to do for the next one.”
The I.C. Medley allows teams to practice a variety of challenges and receive feedback before the regional tournament in March. It serves as a fun, non-competitive skill-building team bonding day that brings together the entire Bedford MADI program.
Seema Dakle, attending as a parent chaperone for a third-grade team, said there was “a lot of fun and learning. It was fun to watch high school kids performing on the same challenge as younger ones.”
Sharma added, “I.C. medley was a boost to [our team’s] confidence! Kids had a lot of fun and the feedback from each of the challenge appraisers was very helpful for us to work even better as a team and was a preview of the expectations on the tournament day.”
“I was amazed to see the students collaborating on such unique and creative solutions to each challenge,” Eileen Feldman said.
Each team traveled round-robin style from room-to-room to practice five different challenges ranging from building a tower on top of pegs to building a cow costume and performing a skit, to building a device to remove items from inside a large box.
Charlotte Feldman felt “it was fun being able to do all those challenges and practice for the tournament.”
Ariana Shah, a third-grade student on The Wacko Warriors team, agreed, saying, “It was a lot of fun to be creative, and also we got to see our friends on other teams.”
Superintendent of Schools Cliff Chuang stopped by the event and said, “It was great to see BPS students employ their imagination and creativity to solve novel problems in a fun atmosphere. I was also heartened to see the level of parent engagement and feedback at the event.” More than 50 volunteers helped at Saturday’s event.
Sharma echoed Chuang’s sentiment, saying, “Thanks to all the volunteers who have worked hard to organize the IC medley and helping us prepare for the final challenge.”
Bedford Destination Imagination thanks the volunteers, parents and team managers, Bedford Public Schools scheduling and custodial staff, and the Bedford Cultural Council for helping make the event a success.
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