MONROE - All together now: U-N-I-S-O-N.
That's the spelling Monroe seventh-grader Shelby Coffey gave Tuesday to win the district spelling bee. The annual event brought together fifth- through eighth-graders from throughout the Monroe school district, 18 per grade, as well as six students from St. Victor School. They competed in a contest of concentration and brain power to determine the best speller in the district. Coffey's win, earned after eight rounds, landed her a spot at the C.E.S.A. 2 Regional Spelling Bee Feb. 20 in Milton.
By the looks on the students' faces as they were concentrating on their words, as captured by Times' photographer Brenda Steurer in Wednesday's paper, it was a grueling competition.
Kelly Seichter, district GT/ER coordinator was kind enough to share the list of spelling words with the Times so we could take a look at them. And that spurred certain (highly competitive) people in the newsroom to suggest our own Times spelling bee to determine whether we are, in fact, smarter than fifth-graders.
Recalling my own less-than-stellar performances in school spelling bees (I fared OK, but never won), I declared myself judge and jury. You can do that when you have the spelling list in your hands.
Keep in mind that those of us in the newsroom generally express ourselves better through keystrokes than speaking. Most of us are several decades out of grammar school and the concentration needed to spell competitively out loud escaped us long ago. And most of us have spent so long staring at computer monitors, we've come to depend on spellcheck entirely too much.
The hastily assembled line-up was Jeff Rogers, editor; Jean Woodruff, newsclerk; Jim Winter, news editor; Brian Gray, reporter; and Tere Dunlap, reporter. We started with Round Four selections. Words are our business, after all - we could skip the preliminaries.
Jeff, Jean and Jim sailed through their words (beige, porpoise and sesame, respectively) before Brian spelled P-R-E-S-T-I-G-E?, the question in his voice the tell that he would be lucky to survive another round.
He escaped the humiliation of being the first out moments later as Tere forgot the E in aerial and was eliminated.
The Js breezed through another round. Brian (who has been known to misspell his own name as B-R-A-I-N) stumbled on toboggan. He grumbled that's why he would spell it S-L-E-D, employing the age-old reporter's trick of "writing around" what you don't know or can't spell.
We kicked things up a notch to Round 5 words. Jim fell on occurrence, always a tricky one. Jean and Jeff sparred back and forth, skipping up to the sixth level. Jeff was heard to spell "knowledgeable" without the second "e," but given the rather lax rules of our bee, and Jeff's insistence that he "intended" to include the second "e," and the fact that he does our performance reviews, we let it go.
The tension was mounting. Jean stumbled next, missing "predecessor" - a difficult one that "Brain" and I would spell "the guy who came before."
That opened the door for our intrepid leader to walk away with the win with "P-R-O-P-H-E-C-Y" - funny, I could have predicted that one.
K-U-D-O-S to Barb Grabow, a teacher at Abraham Lincoln Accelerated Learning Academy for pronouncing words at the bee, and to Seichter and Gwen Shaker, a teacher at St. Vic's, for serving as judges. It's encouraging to see schools and the kids still take spelling seriously, even in the digital age.
It was also fun to be back in school for a few minutes on a busy afternoon in the newsroom, trying to pull letters out of thin air and win the spelling bee. It kinda made me want to brush up on my own spelling skills again.
Congratulations to all the students who made it to the district bee. Your spelling expertise is E-X-E-M-P-L-A-R-Y. And to Shelby: G-O-O-D L-U-C-K at regionals.
- Mary Jane Grenzow is the
features editor of the Monroe Times. She can be reached at mgrenzow@themonroetimes.com
That's the spelling Monroe seventh-grader Shelby Coffey gave Tuesday to win the district spelling bee. The annual event brought together fifth- through eighth-graders from throughout the Monroe school district, 18 per grade, as well as six students from St. Victor School. They competed in a contest of concentration and brain power to determine the best speller in the district. Coffey's win, earned after eight rounds, landed her a spot at the C.E.S.A. 2 Regional Spelling Bee Feb. 20 in Milton.
By the looks on the students' faces as they were concentrating on their words, as captured by Times' photographer Brenda Steurer in Wednesday's paper, it was a grueling competition.
Kelly Seichter, district GT/ER coordinator was kind enough to share the list of spelling words with the Times so we could take a look at them. And that spurred certain (highly competitive) people in the newsroom to suggest our own Times spelling bee to determine whether we are, in fact, smarter than fifth-graders.
Recalling my own less-than-stellar performances in school spelling bees (I fared OK, but never won), I declared myself judge and jury. You can do that when you have the spelling list in your hands.
Keep in mind that those of us in the newsroom generally express ourselves better through keystrokes than speaking. Most of us are several decades out of grammar school and the concentration needed to spell competitively out loud escaped us long ago. And most of us have spent so long staring at computer monitors, we've come to depend on spellcheck entirely too much.
The hastily assembled line-up was Jeff Rogers, editor; Jean Woodruff, newsclerk; Jim Winter, news editor; Brian Gray, reporter; and Tere Dunlap, reporter. We started with Round Four selections. Words are our business, after all - we could skip the preliminaries.
Jeff, Jean and Jim sailed through their words (beige, porpoise and sesame, respectively) before Brian spelled P-R-E-S-T-I-G-E?, the question in his voice the tell that he would be lucky to survive another round.
He escaped the humiliation of being the first out moments later as Tere forgot the E in aerial and was eliminated.
The Js breezed through another round. Brian (who has been known to misspell his own name as B-R-A-I-N) stumbled on toboggan. He grumbled that's why he would spell it S-L-E-D, employing the age-old reporter's trick of "writing around" what you don't know or can't spell.
We kicked things up a notch to Round 5 words. Jim fell on occurrence, always a tricky one. Jean and Jeff sparred back and forth, skipping up to the sixth level. Jeff was heard to spell "knowledgeable" without the second "e," but given the rather lax rules of our bee, and Jeff's insistence that he "intended" to include the second "e," and the fact that he does our performance reviews, we let it go.
The tension was mounting. Jean stumbled next, missing "predecessor" - a difficult one that "Brain" and I would spell "the guy who came before."
That opened the door for our intrepid leader to walk away with the win with "P-R-O-P-H-E-C-Y" - funny, I could have predicted that one.
K-U-D-O-S to Barb Grabow, a teacher at Abraham Lincoln Accelerated Learning Academy for pronouncing words at the bee, and to Seichter and Gwen Shaker, a teacher at St. Vic's, for serving as judges. It's encouraging to see schools and the kids still take spelling seriously, even in the digital age.
It was also fun to be back in school for a few minutes on a busy afternoon in the newsroom, trying to pull letters out of thin air and win the spelling bee. It kinda made me want to brush up on my own spelling skills again.
Congratulations to all the students who made it to the district bee. Your spelling expertise is E-X-E-M-P-L-A-R-Y. And to Shelby: G-O-O-D L-U-C-K at regionals.
- Mary Jane Grenzow is the
features editor of the Monroe Times. She can be reached at mgrenzow@themonroetimes.com