Spelling Bee
Today we had our school spelling bee to see who would represent our students at the district spelling bee. While only a third grader would get to move on to the next round, our first and second graders had the opportunity to get up on the stage and compete with words at their grade level. I was called up last minute to be one of the judges that calls out the words. I have an incredible amount of respect for these kids. It's intimidating enough to get up on stage in front of your peers. The impressive part is that many of the students are in a bilingual or transitional classroom. That means most of the day they are speaking and reading in Spanish.
When it came down to the final two third graders the other two judges and I were actually trying, with much difficulty ourselves, to give them difficult words. Each tough word we gave them they powered through. With only five minutes until the end of the school day one of the students slipped up on a word. The other student was able to take the win.
I was incredibly happy for the student who had won. However, what broke my heart was the student who was the first runner up didn't realize how amazing she had been. She didn't see that out of sixty third graders, she came in second, which is incredibly impressive considering most of her day she speaks and reads in a completely different language from the one she was being quizzed. I truly pray that once the sting of defeat was gone that she was able to look at today as an amazing hurdle that she jumped with grace and poise.
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