Mission: To be the global leader in teaching the creative process from imagination to innovation and to develop opportunities that inspire the global community of learners to utilize diverse approaches in applying 21st century skills and creativity. The destination imagination program encourages teams of learners to have fun, take risks, focus, and frame challenges while incorporating stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), the arts, and service learning. Our participants learn patience, flexibility, persistence, ethics, respect for others and their ideas, and the collaborative problem solving process. Teams may showcase their solutions at a tournament.
Programs: The organization is an advocate for teaching children from pre-k to college the skills that will prepare them for upper grades and the workforce. Students learn and experience appropriate social and emotional behavior, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication. Students are provided with information about their unique intelligences and how to work in a team.
There is an optional high-cost "Global Finals" tournament at the end of the school-year (and the organization does not disclose this to parents at the beginning of the year.) As a result, we spent close to $8000 on sending 5 team-members to this tournament, as they were in the top 3 of 9 contestants at the State level that were chosen to go. They also used the lure of "workshops" to make their event sound more educational and appealing, when their costs (we later found out) weren't even included in the high registration fee. I would have rather been able to, at the beginning of the year, choose a team that was all on the same page about stopping at the State level. Hopefully this information will be helpful to some parents. I have pointed all of this out to the CEO and Board members, and have received no satisfactory response.
