By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In its February 14, 2019 edition, The PUNCH published a story and two photographs of the winners of Eastern District of New Providence Spelling Bee that fully supports a suggestion I have made several times in recent years urging the Bahamas National Spelling Bee (BNSB) Committee to request that the Ministry of Education introduce Spelling Bee Clubs in the country’s junior and senior high schools.
Educators at Thelma Gibson’s Primary School in New Providence apparently were also convinced that a Spelling Bee Club would be helpful in their efforts to provide the best possible education they could to their students and started a Spelling Bee Club to help students “improve their spelling, learning concepts, develop proper English usage and improve and promote a reading culture among learners,” according to The PUNCH article.
“The school aims to enrich the learning experience of students through the growth of English vocabulary, public speaking and self confidence,” the article noted.
The results of that decision were amazing. When the Eastern District of New Providence held its recent Spelling Bee competition to select a champion to compete in the annual Bahamas National Spelling Bee (BNSB) Championship, Thelma Gibson Primary students finished in the top three positions, with Demeek Moxey finishing in first-place, Jonell Marshall finishing second and Cassidy Powell finishing third.
First-place winner Moxey will join the other District champions on Sunday, March 10, 2019 when BNSB championship is held at the Crown Ballroom of Atlantis on Paradise Island.
On its Facebook Page, the BNSB has announced that March 7 – 11 has been designated as “Bee Week” when traditionally all of the various district winners participate in a series of events – including courtesy calls on the Governor General and the Prime Minister – prior to the championship competition.
Every year since the BNSB was introduced in 1998, the overall winner of the championship has represented The Bahamas in the highly prestigious annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., but this year as a result of a new invitational program called RSVBee introduced last year, a additional avenue was created to allow jurisdictions to send two champion spellers to the Scripps National Bee.
Most of urisdictions that traditionally send one contestants to the Scripps National Spelling Bee were quick to respond to the new RSVBee offer last year, and as a result the number of participants in the 2018 Spelling Bee increased substantially from the 291 spellers who participated in 2017 to 519 contestants in the 2018 Scripps Bee. Out of the 519 spellers, 278 of them were from the traditional sponsorship programs and 241 competed through RSVBee, including the overall winner, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani of McKinney, Texas.
Jamaica, for example, quickly took advantage of the “second contestant” and had two entrants in the 2018 Scripps Bee. This certainly is something for officials of the BNSB to keep in mind for the upcoming 2019 Bahamas National Spelling Bee and make whatever arrangements are necessary to obtain sponsorship for the second Bahamas contestant.
As the person responsible for introducing the Scripps National Spelling Bee to The Bahamas when I was Editor of the Nassau Guardian in 1998, with strong support from the then Minister of State for Education Dion Foulkes, I remain very passionate about the contributions that this “educational vehicle” continues to make to The Bahamas’ educational system.
The Nassau Gurdian, of course, is still the principal sponsor along with the Ministry of Education, but it should not be that difficult to find an altruistic individual or corporate sponsor to cover the cost of sending a second Bahamas contestant to the 92nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Fort Washington, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. from May 26 to May 31, 2019.
Last year’s Bahamas spelling champion, Johnathan Randall, a 12-year-old Central Eleuthera High School student, correctly spelt both of his on-stage words, but did not do well enough in the written test to be among 50 finalists.
Participants in the Scripps National Bee include spelling champions from across the United States as well as spelling champions from The Bahamas, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, and New Zealand. The competition is also open to spelling champions from U.S. territories such as Guam, American Samoa, the Navajo Nation, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with overseas military bases in Germany and South Korea.
