Dear Caroline,
This week is my favorite week in the year. It is Bee Week!
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is something I have watched for six years now
although I missed it last year because I was at my rehearsal dinner. Does it
make me a bad person that I would rather have been watching than having dinner
with my family? It was actually an argument for setting the date on June 25th.
Why do I like it so much? I started watching six years ago
when a boy I went to church with and babysat for was a participant. Granted he
didn’t make it to the semi-finals but I was hooked. I guess it is the teacher
in me, but it makes me so proud to see these kids, some as young as six,
dedicate so much of themselves to something so many people don’t value anymore.
With technology and typing, spelling skills are not valued as much as they used
to be. I know that I am a terrible speller and it amazes me that these kids can
spell these words! It blows my mind.
It starts out with various qualifying events from across the
country and internationally. In Georgia, there are two final contests sponsored
by the Augusta Chronicle and the Georgia Association of Educators. In all
honesty, Georgian contestants don’t usually don’t last long. Although we do
have one contestant still in play in the semi-finals. Once arriving in
Washington D.C, all spellers take a written spelling test. Students that do
well enough on the spelling test advance to the preliminaries. Everyone spells
words and you aren’t necessarily eliminated because you miss a word. The top
fifty students who advance to the semi-finals are eliminated from competition
with the sound of a bell should they spell anything incorrectly. The Finals are held at night on ESPN and
are awarded $40,000 in prizes for spelling every word correctly. Below are some
examples of winning words.
2008
|
guerdon
|
Sameer Mishra
|
Journal
and Courier,
Lafayette, Indiana
|
2009
|
Laodicean
|
Kavya Shivashankar
|
Olathe
News,
Olathe, Kansas
|
2010
|
stromuhr
|
Anamika Veeramani
|
The Plain
Dealer
Cleveland, Ohio
|
2011
|
cymotrichous
|
Sukanya Roy
|
Times
Leader
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
|
I really enjoy the Scripps National Spelling bee and would
love to attend some day. I’m famous for it amongst my friends. I’m always
getting kidded about it but it is so worth it.
Wish #54: I wish for you to be a halfway decent speller.
Anything than my skills would be an improvement.
Love always
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