Rising Stars Survival Guide

(January 2017)

Terms to know:

Destination Imagination: An educational program in which students solve open-ended challenges and present their solutions at tournaments. Teams are tested to think on their feet, work together and devise original solutions that satisfy requirements of the challenges.

Central Challenge: A component of DI that involves a challenge with multiple requirements that teams work on over an extended period of time. The solution to this challenge is the main component of the presentation at the tournament.

Instant Challenge: A component of DI that involves a challenge that a team works on in a very short amount of time, usually a matter of minutes. At the tournament, this challenge will be presented to the team without the team having any previous exposure to it.

Team Member: A child aged kindergarten through 12th grade that participates in the program on a team of other children around the same age.

Team Manager: The adult that facilitates communication, education, cooperation and imagination of the team members (aka the team coach).

Appraisers: Trained individuals at the tournament that watch the presentation and evaluate it based on how creative it was and how well it followed the challenge guidelines (aka the judges)

Regional Challenge Master: The head appraiser for a specific challenge at a tournament (head judge)

Affiliate Challenge Master: The state-level official for a given challenge in charge of training managers and appraisers, making clarifications about challenges, often the authority on safety concerns, challenge clarifications, and other decisions (head judge’s boss)

Starting Guide for the DI season:

I’m excited to be a Rising Stars Team Manager! But what is my role?

  • Provide activities that allow team members to learn by doing (instant challenges, posing questions, organizing field trips, finding educational resources, ect.)
  • Facilitate team communication so that they can make all decisions about their solution on their own.
  • Teach the team skills they need to safely do the presentation they would like to create (working with tools, writing a script, making costumes, researching/using the internet, conflict management)
  • Coordinate with parents/guardians about boundaries, meeting details, the tournament, snacks, and interference.
  • Generally organize and control the chaos. You can do it!

I can handle that! But where do I start?

Hold a parents meeting (or two. Or twelve.):

  • Establish a meeting schedule, usually about an hour a week. This is entirely up to you and your team; you may decide that you need much more time closer to the tournament.
  • Plan snacks and check for dietary restrictions. Then check again.
  • Talk about getting extra help, and ask if any parents have any skills they would like to teach the children that they feel are applicable. Parents should be teaching skills ONLY, not offering ideas for the solution!
  • Talk about contributing money for supplies. Older teams have a cost limit and a cost sheet to fill out, and explain that budgeting is one of many skills that we want team members to be exposed to. $50-75 should be plenty for the entire team. Recycled materials are encouraged and celebrated!
  • Explain interference and how it can occur accidentally. In older levels, teams are heavily penalized if there is evidence of interference. We want Rising Stars to be practicing to be experts by the time they reach the elementary level!

Your first few team meetings:

  • Create house rules WITH the team, not for them. Even kindergartners have an idea of what they should and should not be doing.
  • Have some activities ready to go to introduce them to DI and the creative process.
  • Read the challenge and break down simply what the parts are.
  • Explain instant challenge and practice one or two.
  • Create a storyboard and have the team identify what parts of the play they need to complete
  • Always have back up activities. It is 100% ok if the activities have nothing to do with the challenge or even DI. Some times you just need to pause the meeting for a Taylor Swift dance party. It happens.
  • When working on the script, have them analyze a familiar story first. What was the beginning, middle and end like? When did we meet the characters? How did we know who the villain was? How did the characters solve the problem?

How do I avoid interference?

  • Ask questions back when they ask you for help. Instead of “I don’t think that makes any sense” ask “Do you think the audience will know what’s happening if we don’t tell them?”
  • TEACH,don’t TELL. Ideally, children will graduate from this program with amazing interpersonal and communication skills, knowledge of many subjects and tool use, and the ability to solve problems creatively for the real world. Kids can’t learn to solve their own problems in this program if adults are giving them the answers.
  • Adults may do things for the children if it is unsafe for the children to be doing it themselves, but try to avoid such unsafe things in the first place.
  • Adults may scribe what team members dictate for the script and paperwork, but may not correct for grammar or provide commentary. Write what they say, even if its gibberish. We like gibberish.

I have a problem! Who do I go to about….

A question about my team’s solution (safety, logistics or content): The ACM (Jessie)

How DI works for my school or city: Your city coordinator

A question about the tournament: Your regional Director

Training dates, DI in general, getting an appraiser: madikids.org