[DIFLnews] November Newsletter

Tue Nov 26 13:35:15 UTC 2019

As this holiday season approaches, we would like to wish you a wonderful
time with family and friends.  We are grateful that you are interested and
involved in children's education and consider that Destination Imagination
could be a part of that effort.

Florida DI is facing a challenge.  Destination Imagination, Inc. has changed
their requirements for Affiliates, and as a result we are required to
purchase insurance.  As we are still a very small Affiliate, it would be
prohibitively expensive to our teams if we tried to raise our affiliate fees
to cover this cost.  To this end, we are searching for funding sources,
including company grants and sponsorships to keep the program alive in
Florida.  Our current Board of Directors does not have expertise or
connections in this area.  If you have information on sources that we could
approach it would be appreciated.  If you have expertise on fundraising, we
would love to have you on our team.

You can also help.  If you shop on Amazon, we are part of the Amazon Smile
program.  When you select Florida DI to be your charity, a small donation is
credited to us for each purchase you make.  

We are also participating in Giving Tuesday and have a donation button set
up on our facebook page.

Thank you for your consideration of these matters.

Time is flying by, but there is still time to purchase a team membership and
get started
<https://www.destinationimagination.org/challenge-program/start-a-team/> .
The sooner you start, the more benefit your team will get from the program.

If you are just now getting started, don't worry.  You should probably
encourage your team to work on selecting a challenge and then create a Goals
Calendar.  This will help your team stay focused and use solid project
management principles to stay on target for the season.  Have them mark on a
calendar when they think they should be finished with major parts of their
solution- script, costumes, props, technical devices, etc. Pull that
calendar out at every meeting and talk about how long they have to get
things done. Ask if anybody wants to work on certain aspects on their own
and bring them back in at a future meeting.

Remember that kids have their own way of looking at the world, and getting
them to focus can be a challenge, especially younger teams who have not had
to work with others on a long term project.  This can be very frustrating
for you an adult, especially if they might get stuck in the "storming" stage
of team development, or lose sight of their goals.  Refer to the Roadmap,
DII blogs and Team Manager trainings for some ideas of how to help your team
past some of these roadblocks, and realize that your team may have to
readjust their goals (or you may have to readjust your thinking of what they
"should" accomplish) and that it is okay.  Our Florida tournament is
conducted as a celebration of what your teams have accomplished, and we work
very hard to make sure our appraisers understand that. 

Online Team Manager Training Available

In addition to the Adobe training offered by Destination Imagination
headquarters, our California Affiliate of Destination Imagination has posted
several wonderful online videos of their team manager training session.
These are great refresher courses, or excellent for new team managers. You
can find the videos
<https://gadi.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=983ea8d89da8441460e8a9b20&id
=a355d227c5&e=cdf241c009> here. We would like your feedback on these videos,
so please drop us a note at difl.info at yahoo.com <mailto:difl.info at yahoo.com>
if you use any of these

Are you looking for more help to be a successful team manager?  If so, check
out
<https://gadi.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=983ea8d89da8441460e8a9b20&id
=ba8dab6785&e=cdf241c009> Destination Imagination's blog post.  The blog is
full of helpful tips on how to be the ultimate facilitator for your team.

<https://gadi.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=983ea8d89da8441460e8a9b20&id
=5cff41daa4&e=cdf241c009> California Destination Imagination has shared some
webinars that they have created for each of the Challenges. These are really
worth your time to dive deeper into the Challenge that your Team is doing.

Team Tournament Registrations

Please register your team challenge selection with Destination Imagination.
Knowing what challenges you are working on, helps Destination Imagination
and us at Florida DI with our tournament planning.  Remember that you need
to register with both DII and Florida DI.  Our Florida tournament
registration is now open, so that you can start to enter your team's
information for us as well.  You may change any information on your
registrations for us until registration closes on February 29.

Important Dates

Florida Tournament Registration closes February 29, 2020.

Florida DI tournament in Maitland Saturday, March 28, 2020.

Global Finals tournament in Kansas City, Missouri May 20 through 23, 2020

Erica Bowler

Affiliate Director

Florida Destination Imagination

www.floridadi.org <http://www.floridadi.org>  

DIFL.info at yahoo.com <mailto:DIFL.info at yahoo.com> 

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