When you get one or two 4th to 6th graders in a room and have them spell words, its called homework. When you get 200 kids in a room to spell words, it’s called a Bee. That’s what we had this morning, and one of my kids was in the bee, so I thought I should at least check it out. We arrived about ten minutes late because apparently there is a barista strike or something. It was nice visiting with the neighbors while we all waited for the woman making the drinks to whisper our order (venti soy chai), but we had somewhere to bee, so it was frustrating.
I dropped the wife off at the door and then parked on the street, so by the time I sat down the eldest daughter was spelling her second word. In the first round all 30 contestants spelled their names – which I think was a way to weed out “those” kids. Except, you had to take a test to even be in the bee – which is why my youngest daughter was in the audience and not on the stage – so maybe they just did it to get the kids comfortable. That didn’t seem to work.
A few kids dropped in the third round, and that’s when we noticed something a bit alarming – these kids started crying when they missed a word. I guess I can see being upset when you think you might win, and then your hopes are dashed – I coached enough semi-adequate baseball players to know that feeling. But it was, and is, my hope that they were not crying because they felt pressured to win. That would be sad.
One 4th grade girl missed a word in round seven, and I’m pretty sure her brother, seeing her in tears, missed his next word on purpose. This kid was the quintessential spelling bee kid – the “can I have the country of origin” kind of kid. And he misspelled something pretty easy. That was a very nice thing to do, I thought.
He was the last boy to go out, so by round nine it was mostly sixth grade girls. My kiddo misspelled “breathe.” B-R-E-A-T-H – breathe. “I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.” “Oh yeah, E.” She didn’t cry. She is pretty laid back – so much so that she was the only kid that didn’t seem even the least bit nervous. She just spelled. Even when she was wrong, she was confident. I like that.
It came down to three girls. The third place kid missed “provolone,” even though she knew it was Italian. There was some drama right at the end. The second place girl spelled “diagnosis” correct, but the Principal said “diagnoses” and when she asked for a definition, they read the one for “diagnosis,” so she spelled the right word, but the wrong word, so they gave her another one – “silhouette” – and she missed it. The other girl spelled her last word correctly, so she was declared the winner.
In all, it was an hour or so well spent. It made me want to watch Akeelah and the Bee again, but the kids both have sleep-overs tonight, so the wife and I have the house to ourselves and a movie is not on our agenda. I should mention here that I had to let Word correct my butchering of “sillouette”. I couldn’t spell that word if you spotted me the “S-I-L-H-O-U”
