Nine local students win problem solving awards

Nine local students have won state-level awards for their problem solving abilities.

Del Norte High sophomore Andrew Varvara; Oak Valley Middle School eighth grader Victor Varvara and sixth grader Jenna Cardno; Bernardo Heights Middle School sixth graders Sofia Benito, Maddie Engblom, Kylie Norvell Cruz and Anish Rajendran; St. Michael’s School sixth grader Lauren Crane; and Turtleback Elementary fifth grader Shreya Singh competed in the recent Future Problem Solving state meet held in Laguna Niguel, California.

All were coached by Nancy Myles and introduced to the competition while fifth graders at Turtleback Elementary School in Rancho Bernardo.

Future Problem Solving is an international competition that encourages students from 40 states and 15 countries to use higher level thinking skills to tackle issues of a global concern, Myles said. The students prepared for the contest by researching this year’s selected topics. For the local qualifying problem competition they had to learn about ways to recover from natural disasters. At the state level their topic was the global work place.

During the competition, students had two hours to read a future scene pertaining to their topic then select its challenges, underlying problem, solutions and best solution to the presented problem. Their work had to be presented in a written essay using the competition’s creative problem solving method.

At the state meet, the students also prepared and presented a skit that demonstrated the best solution they had selected in the competition’s first part, she said.

The Varvara brothers, plus Rajendran, competed in the state meet as individuals in their respective age divisions. The skit Victor Varvara participated in won first place and qualified for the international competition.

Cardno, Crane, Engblom and Norvell Cruz competed as a junior division team at the state meet and came in sixth out of 26 teams in the written competition. Their skit — which also included Benito, Rajendran and Singh — came in third. Benito and Singh competed as alternates in the state meet’s magic division and Benito’s alternate team came in second place.