Spelling Bee Triumph

Spelling Bee triumph

The local version of the Scripps 40^th Annual Intermediate Spelling Bee took place at the THEARC Theater in Southeast Washington on February 10, sponsored by The Washington Informer.

Among the 37 students from eight District of Columbia schools in the competition on a 50-degree February afternoon, three students represented Saint Augustine Catholic School: Nathaniel Ezra (8^th grade), Abagia Mersha (7^th grade), and Melat Abebe (6^th grade). Since October, Dr. Olga Williams, Saint Augustine’s computer teacher and librarian, had helped prepare the students for the competition through the Spelling Bee Club, an aftercare activity.

Given less than two weeks to study a word list of nearly 4,000 words, there were bound to be challenges. While Abagia stumbled on “Juneteenth” and misspelled it, Nathaniel correctly spelled his eight words: physicist, blockade, misconception, elocution, espousal, paisley, honorous, and kimche, earning first place. Melat misspelled “derricks.”

Nathaniel captured First Place, while Melat was placed 7^th, with both advancing to the city-wide competition at NBC Studios, to be taped on the Feast of St. Joseph, March 19. Following his victory, Nathaniel was interviewed by a reporter from The Washington Informer, who will write an article regarding his achievement.

“My students, I would say, are brilliant,” Dr. Williams said.

For eleven years, Dr. Williams has prepared St. Augustine students for the Scripps Spelling Bee, and the Spelling Bee Club generally meets on Wednesday afternoons. Sixteen students regularly participate in the Spelling Bee Club, while 45 St. Augustine students participated in the school-wide spelling bee for Kindergarten through 8^th grade students during Catholic Schools Week (Jan. 30-Feb. 5), and exercise that required studying 400 words, with a different group of words for each grade cluster.
Since Catholic Schools Week during the first week of February, however, students involved in the competitions have been meeting daily.