Ammon News - HIGHLAND PARK — Elm Place Middle School’s Problem Solving Team took special honors Sunday at the International Future Problem Solving competition for their cross-continent collaboration with teammates from rural Jordan.

Operation Tefkiir, which stands for “think” in Arabic, not only won first place in the Community Problem Solving Middle Division Education category, it also was honored with the Dr. E. Paul Torrance Beyonder Award. Torrance coined the term “Beyonder” to describe projects that “outdistance the others so far that they are not even on the same scale.”

Only one Beyonder award is given across all divisions and the award is not necessarily given each year. The team, made up of students from Elm Place School and the Samek Darwazeh School in Jordan, received a standing ovation when the award was announced.

The competition, held June 6 through Sunday in Indiana, drew hundreds of teams from 40 states and foreign countries.

“One of our goals for this project was to enhance and protect critical and creative thinking skills in Jordan because the Jordanian schools are primarily taught by rote memorization,” explained Maya Garfinkel, a seventh-grader at Elm Place, prior to the competition.

“For us, we are going to need critical thinking skills in the future, more than the adult generation now will,” she said. “Our second goal was to attempt to abolish stereotypes.”

Elm Place pupils sent picture books to Jordan for the students to translate from English to Arabic and read to younger pupils at their school. Similarly, the Jordanian pupils brought books with them that shed light on customs and traditions in their country.

The cross-continent project was conceived during Skype sessions between Emily Scott, a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Jordan, and Susie Greenwald, the Elm Place teacher who sponsors the Community Problem Solving team at the Highland Park school.

Scott had participated on the problem-solving team while a student at Elm Place.

Elm Place parent Yumi Ross, whose daughter Camryn was on the winning team, noted the American and Jordanian students worked tirelessly on the cultural exchange and education project.

“From what I have seen, they made life-long friends and learned about each others countries in the process,” said Ross, a member of the North Shore School District 112 Board of Education.


By Karen Berkowitz/ Highland Park News