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Destination: Global Finals

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

You’ve never seen faster rounds of charades.
When Marion Senior High School’s Destination Imagination teams gathered in the school library for a photo and interview Wednesday, some of the students were in no hurry to go back to class when it was over. Their advisers, Sheila Glenn and Liz Gailliot, suggested they demonstrate their considerable communication skills by playing charades.
In no time, for example, her peers guessed Kathryn McNeil’s complicated, silent portrayal a school bus garage mechanic re-inflating bus tires.
“Can you imagine”? Gailliot asked. “High school students playing charades and loving it?”
The demonstration was not a waste of time, but served both as a testament to and an opportunity to practice skills honed over years of working together as Destination Imagination teams. The camaraderie and communication skills the teams have developed are crucial to their success, and contribute to their eligibility to go to Global Finals in Knoxville next month.
Besides, at their level, missing a few minutes of class isn’t going to drop their student performance levels or their grade point averages.
Some of these kids, those Liz Gailliot advises, have been on a DI team since kindergarten. Sheila’s Glenn’s charges have been at it since fourth grade. Now in high school, all are veterans of the program that lets students develop heightened creativity and problem solving skills, cooperative abilities, and leadership.
In competition, teams demonstrate their skills through their solutions for a Team Challenge they work on for at least two months. These can be technical or mechanical, theatrical with scientific, fine arts or improvisation twists, or involve structural and architectural design.
An Instant Challenge is sprung on teams at tournaments. In under eight minutes, the teams have to create a solution to problem posed on the spot with materials given them, then present their collective response.
On Wednesday, before the charades began, Glenn and Gailliot devised an Instant Challenge for the students as a demonstration and as the first way to honor students’ requests for reasons to stay out of class a bit longer.
The premise of the challenge, Gailliot playfully said to the teams, was that nerds like them might have trouble getting dates—a questionable premise if not outright doubtful given their bright, fun personalities that complement their intellects.
The challenge was to take a collection of items Gailliot rounded up in the school library – a paper flower, paper clips, plastic fork among them – and write a song to be performed with visual aids that would woo a panel of judges to accept their invitations to the prom.
Mary Briggs Graham set about writing the song lyrics some students came up with while others devised ways to incorporate the visual aids in the song’s performance. They prepared with time left over, and when the stopwatch ran out, a line of backup singers and a rhythm doo-wop section formed, and Nick Groseclose took center stage with enough presence and presentation to possibly hush Simon Cowell.
“Judges” Gailliot and Glenn were duly wooed, although Gailliot noted the visual aids were left off somewhere between planning and performance.
When they go to Globals next month in the Thompson-Bolling Arena on the University of Tennessee campus, the DI kids will have this much fun and more.
Pin trading is the most fun for Henry Evans, he said. Each team has its own pin design, and trading pins with team members from other states and nations is a big part of DI.
“Pin trading forces social interaction,” Glenn said. “It causes you meet other people. They’re old enough now to not need the pins,” leaving the activity to its own fun merits for these more senior DI participants.
For Chandler Hopkins the pin trading and staying in the campus dormitories is the most fun.
“Staying in the Hilton is cool,” said Graham, “because of all the people there.”
Wesley Merchon especially enjoys making props, he said.
The biggest challenge in DI, said McNeil, is “getting our original idea that we’ll use all the way through” for the Team Challenge.
Wednesday’s brief practice sessions in Instant Challenge and in charades were important to Glenn even as they were time out for the students. “The older they get, the harder it is to get them together for practice,” she said.
Gailliot agreed. “These kids at this level are involved in everything nine months a year.”
“The ones that do it are really dedicated,” Katie Dishner said.
For all its competitiveness, DI in the end is about bringing people together, a joy for Graham who said she enjoys meeting people from different countries. “Everyone is really nice,” she said. “You can go into a room with a flamingo hat on or something all over your face and no one will say you’re crazy.”
Smyth County’s supervisors and school board “have been very generous,” Gailliot and Glenn said, contributing about half of the expenses the team will incure at Globals, leaving about $6,000 to be raised. DI teams once held bakes sales and car washes, Glenn said, but those projects are difficult to set up now because of the student’s crowded schedules.
Glenn is writing letters to civic groups and individuals, asking for donations. “They always come through for us.”
For Gailliot, contributions represent a good investment. “Older students talk about this on their college applications,” she said. In fact, she said the pharmacy school at East Tennessee State University uses a problem solving exercise in its application process.  “That would be a cakewalk for these kids.”
Both the DI leaders and students see participation as fun, but the adults recognize more in the program.
“The students may not see it now,” Gailliot said, “but what they take away from this will stay with them forever.”