Video: CMS Destination Imagination Competition

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COLUMBUS, Miss.(WCBI)–School may be winding down, but there are still challenges to solve.

Having successfully competed on the state level, Columbus Middle School students are headed to Tennessee to compete against more than 1,400 of their peers at the Academic Worldwide Competition.

Early Monday morning a U-haul is being loaded with costumes and props as twenty one students challenge their peers from across the nation and 30 other countries. Three teams of seven students each from Columbus Middle School are expected to be engaged in creative ways of problem solving. Since October, they have been sharpening their skill sets on things like time management.

“Risk taking, working with a team, knowing that everyone is important. If one person is out it really does hurt because you cannot replace that person ever once a team is formed,” said Sylvia Collins/CMS Gifted Teacher.

“We couldn’t just right off the bat say no thats a bad idea. We had to combine ideas. We had to sort ideas. And we ended up actually about half way through changing what we were doing completely and that really helped us out,” said Sam Yarborough/CMS Student.

Students engaged in competition are being scrutinized in the categories of technology, fine arts, and structure or architecture.

“And we have an illusion where it looks like a floating frog on a lily pad, that we did with mirrors and different types of art work to make it look like it was just a head floating,” said Sylvia Collins.

“We needed to use as much old stuff as possible so we wouldn’t have to add cost to it,” said Sam Yarborough.

These teams of students are given 8 minutes to solve the problem presented to them. Hopefull that will be enough time to propel our local challengers to the top as they compete this week on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville.

“They’ve had to do art work to come up with, write an original skit, they’ve had to perform. And so everyone has worked according to what their talents or special abilities are,” said Sylvia Collins.

“Well this is my first year going to global. The rest of my team mates have been there before. And I’m pretty sure that we’re gonna get a high score,” said Darrell Johnson/CMS Student.

“Probably an a scale of one to ten its probably a nine and a half,” said Sam Yarborough.

At one point in the competitions this week, all teams will be given whats called an “instant challenge” to solve that they did not prepare for.