The Sewing Mom

When my 11 year old was in 5th grade last year, she was involved as a team member of her school’s Destination Imagination (DI) team.  It was a great experience, we all learned a lot!  Her team competed at a regional level coming in 3rd place and moved on to compete at the State tournament, taking 3rd place again.  My daughter totally loved this experience and wants to do it again.

Since then though, we’ve moved from Illinois to Texas.  We have found things to be very different here as far as how things get accomplished at the school.  In Illinois, all of the clubs and teams were managed by teachers who received stipends from the school district to “volunteer” their time.  So, the DI Team Managers were two teachers from the school.  Here in Texas, it is volunteering in the true sense of the word, no payments, simply time given.  So, it seems to fall more to the parents to drive these types of activities.

So, I find myself, at my daughter’s urging, volunteering to run her schools DI program.  I only have experience from the parent side of it, watching practices, supplying props, snacks and transportation, and watching tournaments.  However, I do feel, with some training and some help, I can help a team of 6th graders to have fun and be successful. 

I have all ready met with the school’s principal who is thrilled about the concept and has agreed that the school will pay for registration fees and tournament fees.  My next step is to get the word out to the kids about what DI is and hopefully get kids out for tryouts in a few weeks.  The tryouts themselves will be my next big hurdle, I don’t really know yet how I’m going to run tryouts.  What will I have the kids do, who will help me judge tryouts, what skill sets are we looking for, how will I ever pick a team?!  I am a bit nervous about this, but I’m sure it will come together.

Has anyone else had experience you’d like to share with me about Destination Imagination?