Spelling Bee: Regional Style

The idea of the spelling bee (see post) was for the best kids from each volunteer's community to then meet up with students from other volunteer's communities. One complication was that none of the volunteers near me did the spelling bee-so, that made the "regional" bee a bit more of a challenge. The two volunteers that organized it live near my old site, in Sarapiquí, which-although it's on the same side of the mountains as my site-isn't really that close. But, they were the closest volunteers that had done the spelling bee. As they only work with elementary schools, our regional bee was only with elementary kids. 

(Andreina writes her word before spelling it)

So I practiced and practiced and practiced with the three students heading to the regional bee. They were great, coming early or staying late to practice with me-of course they didn't always have the greatest attitude-but practiced nonetheless. We met at 6:15 in the morning and headed into Limón, from there getting a bus to Guápiles, and from there to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí and with a quick taxi ride to La Guaria-my coworker Marlene's site. Thus, after about four hours of traveling and waiting, my students had a chance to relax, grab a snack, and then it was time to start the spelling bee. There were three students from my school, three from Marlene's and three from Beth's.

(Tiffany writing her word before spelling it)

Much like the local bee, the kids came up one by one, we picked a word out of the envelope, said the word, read a sentence with the word, and said it again. The kids could write it on a little white board if they wanted, and have us repeat it. They only got one chance to spell the word-and we had an impartial judge (Athena another PCV). In the local bee I was a lot more lenient, but I had prepared my kids for this. Sadly, Beth's students all went out in the first or second round. She had been away on vacation and traveling to help with other projects just before the bee, and it appeared they didn't practice too hard on their own. Crazily, the winner of Marla's local bee went out early-which was a surprise to us all. So, by the fourth round, all three of my students, and two of Marla's remained. Unfortunately, my first student went out with the word 'walk'. This really was a bad turn of luck, as I later realized that there were two or three words out of the 150 that I had missed when I made flash cards. Granted-we still had read through the whole list-and they had it to study on their own. But being 6th graders, not much studying got done on its own; so-me having not made that flash card (which we had reviewed incessantly) very much hurt her chances of getting the word right. Although, she's kind of a punk and had the audacity to claim I pronounced the word wrong. Getting the 'silent letters' concept across to Spanish speakers is often quite hard. 

(Edwin waiting to spell his word)

In the next round, another one of Marla's students went out, so I was feeling pretty good, and pretty nervous. I was now guaranteed at least third and second place for my students. They later told me they weren't that nervous, but I can tell you I sure was. Tiffany ended up in third place, unable to spell 'scared' correctly. We had practiced it plenty, but it was always a word they had trouble with-often messing up the vowels, and sometimes using 'k' instead of 'c', which is what she did. So it was down to Edwin, one of my students and a student of Marla's. Her student was sharp, and I think they both spelled their words correctly for two more rounds. It was impressive, they both were very confident, spelling their words right away in a strong clear voice. But, lucky for Edwin-Marla's student misspelled her word after he had spelled his correctly. He then spelled his next word correctly, becoming the champion of the regional spelling bee! I was proud of him, as he had taken me up on my offer to practice on the weekend before and had a better attitude than the other two students. He certainly deserved to win! 

(me with my three students and my school's English teacher)

Unfortunately, we won't be able to hold a national bee this year. As it was the first year that Peace Corps volunteers organized such an event in Costa Rica, it was a grand learning experience. We learned that it took the students longer to learn many of the words than we had planned-as many of their English levels were far below what we had hoped. Scheduling regional spelling bees between the school's, teacher's, volunteer's schedules-and getting approval from the parents and principals also pushed us behind schedule. So, more than anything, we learned that it's important to start it earlier in the year and even more importantly, get it on the official ministry of education's calendar and list of events. Not having the national bee on these two lists severely limited us from getting support for a national bee. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed working with the students at both the high school and elementary school, and it provided a great use of my time and skills-as I've had a tough time working with my teachers here in Liverpool.