{"id":23210,"date":"2025-03-10T20:01:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T02:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/destination-imagination-teams-from-lewis-arriola-elementary-win-in-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:29:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:29:51","slug":"destination-imagination-teams-from-lewis-arriola-elementary-win-in-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/destination-imagination-teams-from-lewis-arriola-elementary-win-in-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Destination Imagination teams from Lewis-Arriola Elementary win in Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An
An early learning team at Lewis-Arriola Elementary School participated in a Destination Imagination challenge, which prompted them to tell a story about a character who was experiencing a weather event for the first time. From left to right, the students are Deardra Neighbors, Lily Lewis, Logan Cressler and Leon Robertson. (Alison Robinson\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Four teams of students from Lewis-Arriola Elementary School headed to Durango on Saturday, March 1 to attend a regional creative challenge, and its two competitive teams won in their respective divisions.<\/p>\n

The two other teams, though not technically competitive, had \u201cfantastic performances,\u201d said Alison Robinson, a fifth grade teacher at the school and liaison for such teams.<\/p>\n

The challenge in Durango was part of something called Destination Imagination<\/a>, which defines itself as a community that\u2019s centered on student-led creativity. It offers this creative space, which it holds is \u201ca system of learning that is at the root of innovation,\u201d with a choice of challenges.<\/p>\n

The challenge can be technical, scientific, improvisational, engineering, fine arts or service learning-based, and they\u2019re global: There\u2019s pre-K, kindergarten through high school and university-level students competing across 36 U.S. states, seven Canadian provinces and 24 countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really empowering process,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cIt teaches them critical thinking, problem-solving and how to collaborate with a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the second year the school has participated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a need for creativity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Plus, it\u2019s a small school \u2013 with one class per grade level \u2013 so it\u2019s \u201cexpanding their teamwork skills,\u201d having first graders work with kindergartners, and vice versa, she said.<\/p>\n

To prepare for regionals, the teams at Lewis met once a week for an hour and a half after school starting in December. They \u201cwere ready to go by March,\u201d said Robinson.<\/p>\n

The two competitive teams were made up of five to seven kids from kindergarten to fifth grade. One team chose the scientific challenge, which prompted students to \u201ctell a story about a character who figures out they are not alone on a planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other team was improvisational, and challenged to \u201ctell a story about a character traveling between two locations \u2026 who is trying to find something and a detour causes an unforeseen change in the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

To tell the stories, they made costumes, developed characters and a plot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s neat to see kids come out of the woodwork,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThey have so many ideas and thoughts to share, and this is a creative space to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since both teams won at regionals, they\u2019re invited to compete at the state challenge in Denver next month, said Robinson.<\/p>\n

One team is set to go, and they\u2019re working on financing to send the other team. If they win in Denver, they could go to the global competition in May.<\/p>\n

The two noncompetitive teams that participated were part of the Early Learning Challenge, which is reserved for preschool through second grade.<\/p>\n

Their prompt was to \u201ctell a story about a character who is learning about one kind of weather for the very first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson underscored the student-led approach to the whole challenge, and said that she and other parent counselors act as \u201cguard rails,\u201d and guard rails only.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe creative process is important,\u201d she said. \u201cDestination Imagination does an amazing job of getting kids to take the reins, and the skills transfer into the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Lewis, there\u2019s only an elementary program. All elementary-aged students are welcome to join, though they\u2019re limited by how many parent volunteers they get. Robinson said that, as it stands, there\u2019s a waiting list to get in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

qualified for a regional competition in Denver next month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,2049,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-lewis","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78019,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23210\/revisions\/78019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23210"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}