NEWS RELEASES from the Mayor's Office City of Knoxville, Tennessee Bill Haslam, Mayor

Mayors Meet with Knoxville's Destination ImagiNation Team

Click here for larger photo for printing May 8, 2008 - Mayor Haslam and Mayor Ragsdale met with the Destination ImagiNation team named "Knoxville Go For It" on Thursday. The team is the only one from Knoxville that will take part in the Destination ImagiNation Global Finals May 21-24 at the Convention Center and UT. Members on the team range in age from second grade to fifth grade and hail from Sequoyah and Bonny Kate schools. Team members are as follows: Jade and Charlie Morton, Kasper and Kell Gammeltoft, Grayson Goble, Sydney Gabrielson and Katie Lyne. The team, coached by Kristin Toussaint and Martha Wike, won regional and state competitions to get to the DI Globals. They chose a challenge in the "Hit or Miss" category and they have to use theatrical, structural, scientific and technical skills, to win. This challenge consists of picking an urban legend or folk tale and using a scientific method to determine whether it could or could not be true. Then the team has to present their findings in the form of an eight minute long theatrical performance - an original story they write that is set in another nation - and the set has to accurately portray some landmarks from that nation and be consctructed from recycled materials. The myth that the "Knoxville Go For It" Team selected is "Would it really be possible for dragons to breathe fire?"

The Mayors talked with the students and presented the team members and coaches with proclamations declaring May 8, 2008 as "Team Knoxville Go For It" Day. Destination ImagiNation is a creative educational program that has grown from its beginnings in 1983 with just 28 teams to a global program involving more than 200,000 students in 56 nations today. The program encourages the development of creativity, critical thinking and project management skills in young people who work together as a team using their combined theatrical, structural, scientific and technical abilities to solve difficult challenges.

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