It is Bee Week!  This year there are 293 contestants competing for the top speller honor in Washington D.C.

I have been busy trying to figure out if there is a way for Amelia and I to see it on TV.  Supposedly the finals are going to be televised on ABC Thursday evening, but I found the local listings confusing and I’m not sure if this is true.  Also, because I’m a recovering addict, we don’t have a television, so that complicates things further.  Anyway, as a great speller wanna-be (I am a high school basketball star with Michael Jordan dreams) I find it all very exciting.  Participating in the Project Read fundraiser (spelling) Bee last fall and coaching Amelia this past winter has reignited my interest in spelling bees.  Fortunately, I found that the internet can help with the desire to hear all about it.

1) You can test to see whether you would have qualified for the quarterfinals last year.  (Pmom: Yes!  Of course since I’ve had an extra 25 years to study, I’m not sure how impressive beating out all those 11 yr olds is).  Scripps will post 2009′s written test words tomorrow, I think.

2) You can check out this throwing things blog (also known as alott5ma) .  Last year they offered a super play-by-play of the bee and they have a fairly comprehensive list of twitterers and bloggers concerned with this year’s bee (but check the comments on that thread, because I added another one!).

3) You can also check out biographies of the spelling bee contestants at the official Scripps site and read CNBC Darren Rovell’s picks for the kids to watch at the Bee. — Go Kavya, go!

Amelia won her school spelling bee last Friday.  It was exciting for everyone who watched.  The students were much better prepared than they were last year and the bee ended with three spellers who were able to go round after round after round with each other, spelling the hardest words on the list and repeatedly not missing.  I was impressed with the elementary student audience.  They were quiet, they paid attention, and they broke their silence to give a satisfying gasp each time a particularly difficult or unusual word was correctly spelled.

Last year, Amelia studied moderately and ended up in 3rd place.  As she was only a 3rd grader at the time, it was an impressive showing.  But I think this may have made this year’s bee all the more tense for her. Her success at last year’s bee made her a more serious speller-—-someone dreaming more about what it would be like to qualify for D.C. than to win the school bee.

Her teacher gave her permission to follow her own spelling program this fall during word study time and she started up on an ambitious program of Latin and Greek root study, etc (sometimes burning out and learning nothing in the process, but ambition has its price).  Suffice it to say that she was much, much, much better prepared for the bee this year.  But I think that made the school bee a little (too?) high stakes.   If you study moderately and achieve 3rd place, can you study tons and tons and be happy with a 5th place showing?  Will anything other than first do?

Amelia was lucky (and don’t be mistaken, spelling bees involve a lot of luck) not to discover her own answer to that question this year.  After several rounds of the threesome spelling word after word after word, the judges concluded that they would have to leave the list to end the contest.  After that, it was over quickly.

For reasons unknown, they chose to ask words off last year’s list. Unfortunately, this meant that they did not have a good pronounciation guide.  Amelia got the word “ambiguity” (incorrectly pronounced as to emphasize the wrong syllable, but in a way that just made spelling it easier).  She spelled it correctly.  The 6th grade boy got the word “nauseous” and spelled it incorrectly.  The 6th grade girl got the word “conciliatory,” which was pronounced incorrectly as “con-SEAL-eatory” and spelled it incorrectly. Amelia was asked to spell “forfeit” to become the champion and she did.

I regretted the problem with the pronunciations at the end.  We had prayed that morning that there would be no end-game messiness/judging problems of this sort (as there often is at spelling bees), but it was not to be.  I like to believe that Amelia would have won no matter what because she was prepared, but it was a shame that the pronunciation was botched at such a critical juncture.  We will never know whether that girl could have spelled “conciliatory” if correctly pronounced.  Probably not, but maybe?  There is a lot of luck in spelling bees.

The aftermath of the bee was a bit funny, kind of anticlimactic.  The principal and other teachers were so eager to honor the threesome as a threesome and to say that they were all winners (nothing wrong with this, mind you) that they never actually said that Amelia had won the bee, never announced that she would be representing the school at the next contest.

It was funny because I was a bit torn.  I also thought that all three of them deserved recognition and praise.  And I also remembered how last year when Amelia was third they had showered praise on the top two spellers and I thought she perhaps could have been included in that.  Also, the pronunciation problem with conciliatory was starting to bother me as I slowly came to realize that it may have been a big deal.  But, ultimately, I am Amelia’s mother.  I also wanted them to say: “You three were great, and you, Amelia, were best of all!  Amelia is the champion!  You spelled every word we gave you!  Hip, hip hooray for Amelia!”

Anyway, I have more thoughts on child achievement and parent angst than one post can hold, so watch this spot.

To pick a winner, I assigned each unique commenter, subscriber, and/or linker (but two chances only) a number.  Then I used Random.org’s random integer generator to select a winner.  There were 27 entries in all.  In the Pfamily household, the suspense was brief, yet intense.  I was rooting for all of you! Thank goodness Random.org is quick.

***

Congratulations to #9 Lis from Visual Anarchy! Look for your $20 Amazon gift certificate to arrive shortly. To the rest of you, rats! I wish you had won too.

1. Robin (comment)
2. Robin (subscription)
3. Julie P (comment)
4. Kacy (comment)
5. Rebecca (comment)
6. Christian F (comment)
7. zstitches (link)
8. Rachel (comment)
9. Jim F. (comment)
10. lis (comment)
11. dayna (comment)
12. liz [distinct from lis #10] (comment)

This means your chances of winning the $20 Amazon giftcard are really good!  If you still wish to enter, it is possible to have up to two chances to win.

1. Make a comment on any post recent or older on this blog.  The comment should not be about the contest and must be relevant to the post you are responding to.  Multiple comments still earn you just one chance.

and/or

2. Subscribe to this blog in a feedreader and notify me that you have done so. E-mail me at ChocolateandGarlicatgeemail.com (do the @ and the gmail in the conventional way)

and/or

3. Link to me and notify me that you have done so.

I will use Random.org to choose the winner, January 12, 2009.

To win:

1. Make a comment on any of the posts on this blog–recent or ancient.  The comment must be related to the post.  (Comments such as “pick me” or “I want to win” are not eligible.)

and/or (you can have up to two possible chances to win)

2.  Subscribe to the blog (Click subscribe on the top navigation bar and choose how you would like the feed delivered).  I don’t know how to see who is subscribed (is there a way to do that?).  So send an email saying that you subscribed to chocolateandgarlicatgeemail.com.  (Fix the @ and the gmail so that they are normal).

I will randomly choose a winner January 12, 2009.

P.S. I told Pdad that I wanted to have this contest.  He said, “Okay. . . but you know people will think that you are desperate for comments.”  I replied: “Exactly!”