Bennet Academy's Future Problem Solvers Win at State Competition

The future will always hold problems, but rest assured there are some very bright young people in our midst who will be ready to tackle them.

On March 25 and 26, twelve Bennet Academy members of Future Problem Solvers competed in the 28th Annual FPS State Competition at E. O. Smith High School in Storrs.  Two groups placed first and second respectively in the Junior Divison and will advance to the International FPS Conference in June at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. A third group placed third in a skit competition.

First place winners were Matthew Boyer, Phaedra Gruver, Fardusy Lucky, and Zachery St. Laurent.

Second place winners were Emma Fisher, Myles Hurley, Aminah Nassiff, and Mary Robbins.

Third place winners were Molly Atzbach, Elisabeth Bienvenue, Trevor Murray and Doria Nollez.

Founded in 1974 by Dr. E. Paul Torrance, Future Problem Solving Program International is an outlet for academically talented students to engage their critical thinking skills and creativity to solve complex hypothetical problems.

"Quite a few schools participate in the program as part of their gifted and talented programs," said Samantha Randazzo, the enrichment teacher and FPS coach who heads up the program at Bennet Academy. "The program teaches kids not so much what to think, but how to think and approach problematic situations. There's a lot of brainstorming, analysis and criteria work involved," she said, adding that the competitions are composed of two components, a Global Issues Problem Solving piece and a dramatic presentation.

"[Future Problem Solvers] is a program where teams have to solve a problem using a six-step booklet," said Future Problem Solver Elisabeth Bienvenue. 

Bienvenue explained that each team of four is given a future hypothetical scenario where they must first determine the various problems they need to solve. Each team must then narrow down the problems to what they feel is the largest one, come up with potential solutions, write out a criteria for judging the solutions and create an evaluation process, then write an action plan.

"We do three problem solving booklets throughout the year, then a fourth at the state competition," she said, adding that the second day of competition at the state level involves creating a skit that speaks to their action plan.

"We also do futuristic projects," said Bienvenue, who described a social networking project she is currently working on with her friend Molly Atzbach. "We used Powerpoint to create a model of a social network that uses hollograms to communicate. It's pretty cool," she said.

Randazzo said each of the eighteen four-member teams in their division that participated in the two-day state competition were given the same hypothetical future problem scenario, and, as is always the case, the scenario is embedded with at least one sticky situation.  

The teams were told that two countries – the Ukraine and Romania – were at war, fighting over the Danube River. Both countries in the scenario were polluting the river. Additionally, the river was home to a rare eel that contained proteins that were found to cure Alzheimer's disease, so the issue of resolving their differences took on an even greater imperative.

"In the winning solution, the students decided to create eel farms on the bank of the river that filter out the pollutants and allow safe and easy access to the eel proteins to help Alzheimer patients," said Randazzo.

"We were all throwing our solutions on the table and one of us came up with the idea, but the rest of us shot it down at first," said Matthew Boyer, whose team took first place. "But then as we got into some of the details, he persuaded us that his solution could both save the eels and solve the pollution problem in the water."

Boyer said that besides being a fun activity, he likes that FPS is not something members work on independently, but rather collaborate and learn how other people think about the same problem.

"My team came in second place," said Myles Hurley, explaining that his team's solution was to shut down the plants that were creating pollutants and paying the workers to clean up the river before reopening the plants and requiring new operations that did not pollute.

"There's a lot of disagreement and conflicts [when we are working on finding solutions], but we are always able to work it out," said Hurley.

"I think FPS is really fun because it extends your learning and it was also fun to go to E. O. Smith and will be to go to Wisconsin, where we will get to meet people from all over the world," he said.  

Randazzo said it is often a different set of students that do well in the performance component, allowing some of the more outgoing of the students to showcase their talents.

"When we planned our water quality skit, we made a checklist of everything we needed to include so we wouldn't lose any points," said Doria Nollez, whose team took third place in the skit portion of the competition.

Nollez said groups were given a few hours to put together their presentation and were given a three minute time limitation on their performance.  Nollez' group performance focussed on a pair of scientists sharing their findings from the Danube River, where her role was to demonstrate a type of sign language for dramatic effect.

"We were given certain objects and props that had to be used in the skit. There were a lot of steps you had to follow," she said.

Randazzo, who has been coaching FPS for four years, said she has about 60 kids in the program this year. She said the school operated a similar program for a number of years but then lost it in budget cuts. It was reinstated in 2007.

"Some people think this program is too hard or too-structured, but it prepares kids to think on their feet," she said. "I really feel it's preparing kids for the future," said Randazzo.

She added that she has also found that so many of the problems the kids are given are right on target. For example, when they first started the program in the mid-1990's, one of the scenarios involved working in a cashless society where kids used cards rather than money to pay for school lunches.

"It's amazing how that all came true," said Randazzo. "I really feel FPS prepares these kids well."

Know of any kids in town who are doing interesting things and could be the subject of a future Whiz Kids feature? Drop us a line.