Templeton Middle School’s sixth grade Future Problem Solving (FPS) team and a seventh grade student earned awards April 20-22 at state competition. Tara Garbe, Jennifer Janusz, McKenzie LaValle and Stephanie Petersen tied for third place for creation of a banner that represented their team and highlighted the topic of the State Bowl, “Health Care Access.”
The team also took second place for its skit, which was an outgrowth of the academic competition. Students were given an unfamiliar future scenario involving a health care issue. The students had two hours to identify 16 problems, brainstorm 16 solutions, choose the 10 strongest and write five criteria questions to help them rank their solutions. They then wrote an action plan for what they decided was their best solution. The students later put together a 4-minute skit to present their action plan to evaluators, coaches, parents and other teams.
Seventh-grader Paula Myatt took fourth place in the individual competition, where she completed a booklet with the same requirements, except she had to identify 10 problems and come up with 10 solutions.
Future Problem Solving is a year-long educational program in which students learn a six-step problem solving process and apply it to future situations. Goals of the program are to encourage students to become more creative in their thinking, develop richer images of the future, increase their research skills, learn cooperative teamwork skills and increase their written and verbal communication skills.
FPS involves more than 250,000 students in the United States and six foreign countries. In Wisconsin, 140 teams participated during the school year and 56 qualified for the State Bowl.