Thirteen Huron Middle and High School students are headed to the Destination Imagination Global Finals, where they’ll compete in creative problem solving challenges. The Huron students make up just a few of the thousands of kids competing at the event. But there’s something unique about these two teams. Nearly all of the students are Karen refugees from Burma and Thailand.
Sometimes it’s tempting to walk into an experience and only pick out the new and different things. But meet enough people, and try enough new things, and you might come to the conclusion that many of us on this planet have quite a bit in common. Take, for example, a recent scene at Huron Middle School.
The school day is over, and a group of kids are standing in a circle in the gym, laughing and talking, and kicking around a hollow, woven plastic ball. They’re playing a Burmese game called chinlone, or cane ball, and the way they hit it with their feet reminds me of the kids of my generation standing outside after school kicking around a hacky sack.
Of course, many of these kids have lived much different lives than I have, coming to the U.S. from refugee camps in Thailand. There are about 2,000 Karen people in Huron, and this group makes up about 22 percent of the student body.
ESL teachers help these kids transition into life at Huron Middle School. Last year a couple of those teachers decided to offer Destination Imagination as an extracurricular activity. Bobbie Matthews says at first they didn’t know what would happen.
“And so we presented the idea to the kids, actually the whole school, the middle school,” Matthews says. “And we had one Caucasian student sign up, and 44 of our ESL students came and signed up last year and said they wanted to do it. And as soon as their parents heard the amount of language acquisition and learning that took place in this program, this year the kids were asking before school even started, when is DI, when is DI, when is DI?”
This year Matthews says more than 100 kids signed up. She says some of the adults who volunteered for the program just happen to be the ESL teachers, so the Karen students are comfortable trying something new. Matthews manages one of the teams bound for the global finals, the Rogues. They chose a fine arts challenge, one of the six different categories of competition. They researched an artist, and wrote an original play, complete with a backdrop and set incorporating their research.
Matthews says the girls on her team learned about more than just art.
“I have four different languages on one team, in six girls,” Matthews says. “So it’s been really great to watch how they have learned to communicate with one another, and not just in interpreting for one another, but in helping each other to learn either language they’re working on teaching each other.”
Seventh grader Paw They Day enjoys being on the team for a couple of reasons.
“Hanging out with friends, and learning more English. We practice the script in English so we learn more things,” she says.
Her South Dakota born teammate Marilyn Wolff says having a diverse team is a lot more fun.
“Because then you get to learn more of what their culture is,” she says.
And thanks to the other team headed to the global competition, the entire community is learning more about Karen culture. The Green Team has a service learning challenge. They had to find a need that wasn’t being met, and create a way to address the need. The students love to play cane ball. One version requires nets and a court, where players have to get the ball over the net without using their hands. Kind of like a combination of volleyball and soccer. Green Team member Tree Paw says her group wanted to meet the community’s need for a cane ball court.
“Because it’s our culture game,” Paw says. “In town we don’t have a chinlone court, and we want to have a chinlone court so we came up with it. When we get a court we will go and invite soccer players to teach people to play.”
Team Co-Manager Wendy Voss says the service learning challenge required a lot of public speaking, something new for these kids.
“Definitely overcoming being shy is a huge thing,” Voss says. “And being able to speak clearly enough that the judges understand what is going on and loud enough that people can hear it. My group also had to go to meetings with people in the city, the school board, they’ve done a lot of it. And it’s really difficult for any kid this age to get in front of adults and have to talk like that. But when you add the language barrier, it’s one more step, one more thing to overcome.”
And Voss says her team has overcome those challenges. Soon, the city of Huron will have two cane ball courts, and possibly more in the future.
“They really felt like, nobody’s going to want to do this, this is so different,” Voss says. “I emailed one person that I knew, who was the city planner, and he set up a meeting for us with Huron Parks and Rec. Went we went to the meeting everybody on the board was so excited they said, Are you sure one court is going to be enough? Maybe we need to build more.”
Members of the Green Team reenact the process in a skit as part of their presentation. But they also get to share a bit about their history.
“Karen People ran far away from Burmese soldiers, because they killed Karen, made their slaves, and took their land.”
Team member Hser Blute Htoo felt it was important to share this and other aspects of his culture with people, because the Karen are a relatively new group in South Dakota.
He and his teammates will soon share their culture and cane ball with even more people, when they head to the global competition in Knoxville Tennessee next week.
To help the team travel to competition, you can send funds to:
Destination Imagination
C/O Huron Middle School
1045 18th St SW
Huron, SD 57350.