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At the end of the day, not everyone will make it to the top.
Perhaps no one came to understand that hard truth more than the young people who suffered defeat during cluster bees that The Washington Informer hosted at THEARC in Southeast. On the second day of the bees, just before the pool of roughly 40 competitors gradually winnowed down to six during the middle school cluster, one of the adults fulfilled an urge to address the young people in the room.
“No matter what, you should be honored to be on this stage,” Jason Moore, one of The Washington Informer Citywide Spelling Bee’s longest-serving organizers, told spellers on the afternoon of Feb. 6.
“You have worked hard, and deserve to be on this stage,” continued Moore, D.C. Public Schools (DCPS)’ manager of elementary assessments and interventions, as he called on audience members to applaud the young spellers.
A Full-Blown Competition, One Winner’s Reflection
On Feb. 5-7, 243 students from 81 schools across the District competed for the opportunity to participate in the 43rd annual Washington Informer Citywide Spelling Bee.
Those who made it to the cluster bees won top prize at smaller spelling bees their schools hosted weeks prior. Some of those schools — including Ida B. Wells Middle School and Howard University Public Charter Middle School of Math and Science — had more than one student participating in the clusters.
More than 472,000 words were eligible for use in the competition, with the difficulty of the words increasing during each round. Spelling bee rules allow spellers standing at the mic to request a word’s: language of origin, definition and manner in which it’s used in a sentence, before trying their hand at the word in question.
After three days of competition, a total of 30 elementary and middle schoolers advanced to the citywide bee. The young person who wins first place in the citywide competition later this spring will represent the District at the 100th Scripps National Spelling Bee in May.
The second day of the cluster bee kicked off with the word “naughty,” which 6th grader Amira Jerome of Howard University Public Charter Middle School of Mathematics and Science spelled correctly. Other words during the first round included “groceries,” “bazaar,” and “spritzed,” with the overwhelming majority of the spellers succeeding and advancing to the next round.
“Ointment” counted as the first word to knock out a speller, while “teriyaki” and “steeped” also drew eliminations.
After a short water and restroom break, “wealthy,” “truncate,” and “addendum,” further narrowed the field in the second round. As the difficulty increased in the third round, the frequency of misspellings increased rapidly, as seen with the elimination of the first three spellers in the third round.
By the start of the fourth round, fewer than 20 students remained on the stage at THEARC.
During the fifth round, “pitanga,” a type of Brazilian fruit, ushered a young person to the next stage of the competition. After that, the top five spellers, including Katya Lieven of Blessed Sacrament School in Northwest, advanced to the citywide spelling bee.
Other young people who will show their spelling skills at the Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment this spring include: Zwe Spacetime of Louis Armstrong Homeschool, Holden Consentino of Hardy Middle School in Southeast, Nora Baker of BASIS DC Public Charter School in Northwest, Aurora Felton and Biance Curry of Deal Middle School in Northwest.
For Katya, whose winning word was “prajna,” a Buddhist term for enlightened truth, the cluster bee victory affirmed the value of all her hard work.
“It feels great, especially since I was [such a] novice to this,” she told The Informer as she explained her study regimen. “I prepare by using the WordClub app and asking my parents to quiz me as well.”
Looking Back: A Southeast School’s Preparation for the Cluster Bee
In the months leading up to the three days of Informer cluster bees, staff members at District public, public charter and private schools conducted competitions of their own. Elementary and middle school students spent an untold number of hours practicing at home and competing with their classmates for a chance to represent their school at the THEARC.
Some staffers, like Sherrell Tolbert-Batts, told The Informer they had a much greater outcome in mind for the young Black scholars they guided along this process.
“I’m looking for one of my good little lambs to go all the way to the top [for] the $50,000 championship, endorsements and exposure for them and the school so people can see what we bring,” said Tolbert-Batts, a D.C. public school librarian in her first year at Turner Elementary School in Southeast.
On Jan. 30, more than two dozen third, fourth and fifth graders participated in the qualifying bee at Turner Elementary, a production coordinated by Tolbert-Batts in collaboration with a cadre of staff members, substitute teachers, and community members.
Aaron Jenkins, the Office of the Attorney General’s director of community engagement, served as an announcer, while D.C. area real estate agent Eze Okwodu served as one of three judges.
After a couple hours of nail-biting competition, a trio of young people cleared their path to victory, one multisyllabic word at a time. Those young people — Anthony Johnson, Sameera McDowney, and Malik Parker — clinched the first, second and third prizes at the school-level bee.
“I wasn’t shocked about what they could do,” Tolbert-Batts said about her students. “They’re really smart; I learn more from them than I teach them.”
During the cluster bees, Anthony, a fifth grader, gave it his all before his elimination during the second round of competition. In the days leading up to, and following, the cluster bee, Anthony has been the subject of praise and accolades in his family and among his church community. Even though he’s not going to the citywide bee, Anthony has no plans to deviate from his path as an academic.
In speaking about his son, Leonard Johnson, Jr. said that the journey proved to be well worth it for a young elementary schooler eager for the discipline needed to achieve his dream of becoming a software designer.
“My children have been paying attention to what I tell them about the importance of education and gaining knowledge,” Johnson told The Informer. “They had been preparing for the bee for the last couple of weeks. We go through the word list and commit to memory to bring home another win.”
In recent years, as students from private and parochial schools increasingly participated in The Washington Informer Spelling Bee, the young person who won the local bee and represented the District at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland rarely came from a District public or public charter school.
Oftentimes, those who did come from the public school system weren’t Black or African American.
Even so, Tolbert-Batts said she wouldn’t let those circumstances deter her from demanding the best of her young people, especially those who clinched the top three prizes in the Jan. 30 qualifying bee that Turner Elementary School hosted.
“The only way to go is up,” Tolbert-Batts told The Informer. “I like spelling bees for showing teachers and students what they are capable of. It’s you against the world. Spelling bees promote literacy and presentation, public speaking, reading and writing. If you can spell well, you can write and communicate well overall. “