East, Longfellow Students Advance to Global Competition

From the :

and students won awards in the Destination ImagiNation (DI) state competition held recently at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and will advance to the global tournament May 23 through 26 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The Longfellow DI team – The Pet People – won second-place honors in the “Project Outreach” challenge; team members are sixth graders Christina Dralle, Anna Felten, Emma Kessler, Evan Knauss and Carmen Prantil.

The students designed a program to reduce unintentional animal abuse by educating young children about the best way to handle pets. Teams participating in Project Outreach used marketing tools to address real issues in their communities.

As their projects evolved, teams were encouraged to engage community members to promote their chosen cause. You can learn more about the Longfellow DI team at www.thepetpeopleoflongfellowdi.blogspot.com.

East students placed first in the structure problem, “Hold It.” Students on the team were: Maggie Elliott, Evan Patton, Alex Groth, Ross Janis and Julia Armstrong.

DI is a multidisciplinary scholastic competition that combines aspects of engineering, set design, acting and improvisation. Teams choose to solve one of six different “Central Challenges.”

These challenges focus on technical design, improvisation, acting and combination technical and acting, or structure; all challenges have aspects from all of these disciplines.

Every idea must come only from team members – no outside influence is allowed. The team manager (or coach) is not a team member and is only allowed to provide skills training and motivation.

The Wauwatosa Destination ImagiNation program is mostly funded through donations and fundraising. Anyone who would like to help Longfellow’s team pay for costs associated with attending the global competition can send donations to Longfellow Middle School, Attn.: Anne Coulling, DI Coordinator, 7600 W. North Ave., Wauwatosa, WI 53213. Checks should be made out to Longfellow Middle School with "DI" in the memo line.

Bake sales to benefit the Longfellow team will be held May 8 at and Longfellow while polls are open for the Democratic primary election.