spelling bee

A few weeks ago my friend Elise and I were invited to be spelling bee judges for a bilingual school in Tegucigalpa. I must admit that I was pretty excited about this opportunity. Back in my middle school days, I was a member of the Leo Elementary and Jr/Sr High School Spellbowl Team.  And we even made it to the State Finals my 8^th grade year.

What is Spellbowl you ask? Basically, it is a modified, team version of the traditional spelling bee. Instead of standing in front of a crowd and spelling aloud, you sit at a desk and write 8 words with a proctor to check for accuracy. Your team does this for 7 or 8 rounds and then scores are tallied to determine the winning teams.

Being that I was quite a spelling nerd in my younger years, I was excited to participate as a judge. However, Elise and I were not prepared for the intensive competition that was the National Episcopal Bilingual School Spelling Bee of 2011. We thought we might be 2 of maybe 4 judges for the whole school, and there would be some parents on hand to snap photos.

Instead, we were ushered into a room with about 30 other judges (gringos of various ages and stages, along with a handful of bilingual Hondurans) and sat through 30 minutes of detailed instruction and explicit rules. This principal lady was no-nonsense. “Each room must follow the rules exactly as printed and must not stray from the rules. We have too many rooms of competition and to be fair to the students, the rules must be the same in each room.” She had lists of assignments, official folders, even walkie talkies…Wow, this is definitely being run by a gringa, I thought to myself.

I was assigned to 4^th grade, along with 3 other judges. One was the Reader, one was the Scribe, and I was 1 of 2 Judges, there to ensure accuracy, following of the rules, and offer dictionary definitions as needed. There were 5 kids competing in 4^th grade from all over Honduras and I think the whole competition lasted about 9 minutes.

It was single elimination, the first word was “know” and the first 2 spellers got it wrong. Stupid silent k…I felt so bad for them! So then we were down to 3 spellers. The next boy got “hydroelectricity,” which did not go over so well.

Down to 2 kids. 1 who was very confident he would win, 1 who was shy, but knew her stuff.

4th Graders

Mr. Confident thought his competitor was going to miss the last word, but she nailed it. He misspelled his next word, but the girl spelled it right. To ensure her victory, she had to correctly spell one more word right, and then became the 4^th grade champion.

I felt bad for the kids, as the whole point was to practice English, and based on the very strict single-elimination rules, they only practiced about 3 words. But, in true Honduran fashion, everyone got a certificate of participation at the closing ceremony.

Overall it was a fun morning and a good reason to go out for lunch with friends after our intensive work as spelling bee judges J