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Josie Babin is 11 years old, and she has a theory about why kids should be left alone to figure things out for themselves.
"The kids' stuff is better because they're younger and they know stuff about now," she said. "Adults are really old, and they only know stuff about the past."
Josie and her three teammates spent months proving her point. The Peanut Butter Jellies, four fifth-graders from Boone Elementary in Allen ISD, earned a perfect score of 400 and first place in the service learning elementary level category at the TVNC & NExT Regional Destination Imagination Tournament, held Saturday, Feb. 21 at Newman Smith High School in Carrollton. Appraisers also gave the team the Spirit of DI Award for exceptional teamwork and creativity in the Instant Challenge portion of the competition.
More than 110 teams competed Saturday at the Carrollton campus, with students from kindergarten through high school presenting solutions to open-ended STEAM challenges before panels of appraisers. At the tournament, teams also face an unannounced Instant Challenge, a timed problem designed to test how fast they can think and collaborate under pressure.
Destination Imagination, a volunteer-led nonprofit that grew out of Odyssey of the Mind in 2000, requires teams of two to seven students to spend months developing a solution to one of seven annual challenges spanning technical, scientific, fine arts, engineering, improvisational and service learning categories.
The Peanut Butter Jellies, Kaylee, Josie, Annie and Harper, partnered this year with the Birthday Party Project, a nonprofit that brings birthday celebrations to children experiencing homelessness, donating toys and microwavable cake mixes for the organization's "birthday in a bag" program. Three of the four girls are dyslexic, and for team manager Rebecca Babin, Josie's mother, the program's meaning runs deeper than any score.
Her path to team managing began with her older son, who is also dyslexic and competed in DI for three years. "It was a program for him to feel smart and encouraged," she said. "It has just been so good for the kids' self-esteem to see how brilliant they really are, how creative they are, being able to take the lead."
One of DI's foundational rules is that adults, including parents and coaches, are prohibited from helping with any part of a team's solution. Every script, prop and costume must be the students' own work.
The rule, Babin said, is easier to understand than to follow. "Sometimes that's hard, when you see props completely shattered to the ground or they're building them in a way that you're like, that's definitely not gonna stay," she said. "But they learn, and they figure it out. And it sticks better."
Kaylee Visalli, 10, put it simply. "The best part about DI? Hanging out with your friends. It's really fun competing."
Samhita Prasanna, Soham Gupta and Pranav Venkatraman are three members of the 7 of Spades, an independent senior-level team that first competed in second grade. Six of their seven original teammates returned Saturday to qualify for the state tournament for a ninth consecutive year.
"As second graders we were put in a situation where we had to work together as a team," Prasanna said. "So we all learned about each other, our strengths, our weaknesses."
Venkatraman said nine years of that process has built skills no single class could teach. "DI teaches children public speaking, acting, creative thinking, because you have to create a lot of props, fit your mind and adapt to different challenges," he said. "I definitely, if I have kids, would want them to do DI."
Their team manager, Subha Natarajan, has watched that evolution from the start, and she remembers who some of these kids were. "It brings kids out of their shell," she said. "They didn't want to be in the limelight. And now, they do. Because once you build that interest, they don't want to let it go."
Raye Koch understands that pull. A scientific challenge master at Saturday's tournament, Koch has been involved in DI for 35 years, beginning when her daughter, now 41, brought home a permission slip from first grade. Koch signed it without knowing what she was agreeing to.
"I signed it, and the next thing I know, I'm coaching a team," she said. "There's still red paint on my dining room furniture. But you know what? I wouldn't trade it."
She said the volunteers who fill these halls every year share the same motivation. "What we're trying to do is create leaders for the future, leaders who can problem solve anything, who can take any situation, not panic, break it down, figure it out and work with others who have different strengths," Koch said. "Together, create a solution to the world's problems."
And the Peanut Butter Jellies are proof. Four fifth-graders, a first-place trophy and a trunk full of birthday supplies for kids who need them.
Top-scoring teams from Saturday's tournament advance to the Texas Destination Imagination Affiliate Tournament, with the highest finishers earning a spot at DI Global Finals, held each spring in the United States.
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