Destination Imagination is a creative outlet for students to enhance their learning by doing different hands on activities. Destination Imagination focuses on the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, fine arts and service. The goal of the program is to teach the creative process through the use of imagination and innovation.

At our school we have a couple different groups of students who are involved in Destination Imagination. The team Don’t Pet The Buffalo is a group at EPHS containing seniors Riley McGlasson, Claire Yang, Julia Camilli, Chloe Ramos, Camille Ramos and Joey Larabee. The team participates in the improv category at the regional, state and global competitions. The global competition takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee with 14 other countries from around the world.

Senior Riley McGlasson talked about the improv challenge for this year, which includes making a skit in a given setting that contains a news headline that must be incorporated into the skit. As if the skit was not challenging enough, the team must also make their probs using only newspaper. “It is kind of hard because newspaper doesn’t like to stick to itself,” said McGlasson. The last element to the improv challenge is that one person from the team must go flip over a piece of paper that has a character, called the mysterious stranger, and then enter the scene without telling anyone who their character is.

Mcglasson said, “[Destination Imagination] has helped me to become more of a creative thinker and it really helps you build teamwork and leadership skills.” Especially doing improv there is a lot of teamwork that goes into making the skit successful. “You don’t have time to plan out every part of a story. You just have to jump in and be able to adapt to whatever happens.”

There are many other challenges that teams can choose to participate in at competition such as a technical challenge where teams have to build something that meets the requirements of the challenge. Destination Imagination Team Challenges help students to work together to solve a problem. These challenges teach students valuable skills that they will be able to carry with them throughout their lives.