Saturday, April 28, 2007
The team took regional and state honors to advance to international competition.
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Rayen School may disappear with the end of this school year, but one of the school's academic teams is going out on top.
The five-member Destination Imagination team won first place in regional competition at Youngstown State University in March and then tied for first place with Barberton High School at the state competition held a week ago in New Albany, Ohio.
That qualifies them for the Global Finals at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville the week of May 21.
That will be an international competition with teams coming from all 50 states and 44 countries.
This is the first time a high school team from the Youngstown City Schools has ever achieved this honor, said Jeanne Constantino, teacher and team manager. This will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the students since four of them are seniors, she said.
Destination Imagination is an educational program that fosters creative thinking, problem-solving skills and teamwork. Working together, team members develop skills that will enable them to set and achieve extraordinary goals; fine-tune highly creative, "out-of-the-box" solutions to difficult challenges; develop divergent thinking skills, self-confidence and tolerance; and explore the vast possibilities that arise when one becomes a true risk taker.
It's been described as "an Olympics of the mind."
Team members
Members of the Rayen team are: Dionna Wallace, Kayshia Douglas, Shanequa Woods, Stephanie Carter and Phillip True.
They chose the challenge "Round About Courage" in which they had to present a theatrical performance of a team-created story about a heroic adventure and include a hero in the story who must overcome a personal challenge.
This had to be presented in the style of theater in the round and had to integrate one or more technical set pieces or props into the presentation that could not include electricity or batteries of any kind. All of this had to be done in an eight-minute presentation.
The team also had to do an Instant Challenge, which is secret until the day of the tournament.
The Rayen team also won The Renaissance Award at state, which is given for outstanding design, engineering or performance.
They won the DaVinci Award at the regional competition, an honor given for having a unique approach to a solution, for risk taking and/or for outstanding creativity. This was given to them for their main challenge, Round About Courage.
Team manager assistants are Jocelyn Dabney and Cheryl Nuzzi.