(adapted from Head of School, Susanna A. Jones March 13 blog post)
The first weekend in March, we hosted the 2015 Scripps Regional Spelling Bee for Montgomery County. While students have tested their spelling prowess in bees since the nineteenth century, the first national spelling bee didn't take place until 1925. Today the field has expanded from nine contestants ninety years ago to more than eleven million students participating in bees leading up to the national championship which Scripps, the media giant, sponsors and ESPN broadcasts. We held a bee for our Lower and Middle School students to determine who would represent Holton at the County-wide bee. Spelling "cygnet" correctly, sixth grader Esther Kim won.
On March 7, Esther joined 35 other students, third through eighth graders, representing independent, parochial and public schools around Montgomery County, who had triumphed in their school bees. From awkward eighth grade boys whose voices had already changed to a pint-sized eight-year-old in pony tails and mary-janes, they arranged themselves in the order of the numbers on the plastic placards around their necks and practiced adjusting the microphone, a necessary skill due to their widely divergent heights. As the official pronouncer and the two judges, one of whom was our own Dr. Hannah Krug, Upper School math teacher, whom, it turns out, competed in the national championship bee in 1999, waited, I read a little history, thanked people, including the Meakem Group, who sponsored the bee, and reviewed the rules.
The competition began with contestant number 1, an adorable third grade boy who was asked to spell "burrito." A student may ask for alternate pronunciations, the definition, the language of origin, to have the word used in a sentence, and whether they are pronouncing it correctly before actually spelling it. Number 2 girl asked for all this every turn. She went down in round seven when she misspelled "blenny," a small, scaleless fish who lives on coral reefs (she missed an "n"). When a child spelled a word wrong, the judges rang a bell. She returned to her seat until the round finished when all losers left the stage.
I learned later from Esther that all the students had received packets with words they could expect to be used in the bee, along with the rules and other pertinent information. Until round six or seven, the pronouncer drew the words from the provided list. A very odd collection of words they were: the first two rounds included idori (a Japanese dance), wiki wiki, geoponics, and vibrato. One poor boy started spelling "gardenia" with a "j" but despite catching himself and spelling it correctly after that, he was out. In the third round, students fell to "strudel," "boutique," "gristle," "catkin" (according to the Encarta dictionary, "a long hanging furry cluster of tiny leaves and flowers without petals, produced by trees such as willows, birches, alders, and poplars" – one of many words I'd never heard in my life) and "mongrel," but handled "greengage," "junco" (the bird), and "satori" (a state of spiritual enlightenment in Zen Buddhism). In the next round "philippic," "lockshen," "novello," "fraulein," "facetious," and my personal favorite, "waterzooi" (a Belgian stew – who knew?) proved the undoing of six students while our own Esther stayed in the game with a correct spelling of "ersatz." The contest continued with words like "kibei," "kuchen," "serdab," "lahar," "alim," "caballero," "gynarchy" (rule by women, definitely my favorite new word of the day), "roodebok,"and the aforementioned "blenny."
By round eight, only seven students remained, Esther being one of them. I was just beginning to visualize her winning the whole enchilada (a word from round three), when she skipped the second "o" in "indecorous" and her impressive run came to an end. After two more rounds "orrery," "effete," "besom" and "omniscient" had eliminated all but the last two contestants. "Insomniac" brought down one of the two remaining, and after spelling "ostium" and "pantheistic" correctly, Raffae Chowdhury, a sixth grader from Rocky Hill Middle School, emerged victorious, the Montgomery County Scripps Spelling Bee Champion.
Congratulations, Esther!
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| Esther Kim during a round at 2015 Scripps Regional Spelling Bee for Montgomery County |
On March 7, Esther joined 35 other students, third through eighth graders, representing independent, parochial and public schools around Montgomery County, who had triumphed in their school bees. From awkward eighth grade boys whose voices had already changed to a pint-sized eight-year-old in pony tails and mary-janes, they arranged themselves in the order of the numbers on the plastic placards around their necks and practiced adjusting the microphone, a necessary skill due to their widely divergent heights. As the official pronouncer and the two judges, one of whom was our own Dr. Hannah Krug, Upper School math teacher, whom, it turns out, competed in the national championship bee in 1999, waited, I read a little history, thanked people, including the Meakem Group, who sponsored the bee, and reviewed the rules.
The competition began with contestant number 1, an adorable third grade boy who was asked to spell "burrito." A student may ask for alternate pronunciations, the definition, the language of origin, to have the word used in a sentence, and whether they are pronouncing it correctly before actually spelling it. Number 2 girl asked for all this every turn. She went down in round seven when she misspelled "blenny," a small, scaleless fish who lives on coral reefs (she missed an "n"). When a child spelled a word wrong, the judges rang a bell. She returned to her seat until the round finished when all losers left the stage.
I learned later from Esther that all the students had received packets with words they could expect to be used in the bee, along with the rules and other pertinent information. Until round six or seven, the pronouncer drew the words from the provided list. A very odd collection of words they were: the first two rounds included idori (a Japanese dance), wiki wiki, geoponics, and vibrato. One poor boy started spelling "gardenia" with a "j" but despite catching himself and spelling it correctly after that, he was out. In the third round, students fell to "strudel," "boutique," "gristle," "catkin" (according to the Encarta dictionary, "a long hanging furry cluster of tiny leaves and flowers without petals, produced by trees such as willows, birches, alders, and poplars" – one of many words I'd never heard in my life) and "mongrel," but handled "greengage," "junco" (the bird), and "satori" (a state of spiritual enlightenment in Zen Buddhism). In the next round "philippic," "lockshen," "novello," "fraulein," "facetious," and my personal favorite, "waterzooi" (a Belgian stew – who knew?) proved the undoing of six students while our own Esther stayed in the game with a correct spelling of "ersatz." The contest continued with words like "kibei," "kuchen," "serdab," "lahar," "alim," "caballero," "gynarchy" (rule by women, definitely my favorite new word of the day), "roodebok,"and the aforementioned "blenny."
By round eight, only seven students remained, Esther being one of them. I was just beginning to visualize her winning the whole enchilada (a word from round three), when she skipped the second "o" in "indecorous" and her impressive run came to an end. After two more rounds "orrery," "effete," "besom" and "omniscient" had eliminated all but the last two contestants. "Insomniac" brought down one of the two remaining, and after spelling "ostium" and "pantheistic" correctly, Raffae Chowdhury, a sixth grader from Rocky Hill Middle School, emerged victorious, the Montgomery County Scripps Spelling Bee Champion.
Congratulations, Esther!
