National Spelling Bee Research Articles

How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford (review)

Reviewed by: How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford Kara Forde Weatherford, Carole Boston How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee; illus. by Frank Morrison. Candlewick, 2023 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536215540 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 2-6 As a smart kid whose idea of fun was reading the dictionary, MacNolia Cox excelled at spelling, and after winning her school spelling bee in 1936, she advanced to compete at the city level. She correctly spelled words like brusque, felicitate, and voluble to become the first African American to win the Akron spelling bee, which came with a prize of twenty-five dollars and a trip to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC. However, at the event, MacNolia, her mother, and the only other African-American contestant were segregated from the white participants. In the final rounds, MacNolia misspelled a word that her supporters contested was not on the official list, but the white, Southern judges disagreed. Weatherford cleverly structures this picture book biography around the repetition of the question "Can you spell…?" to highlight words and themes germane to young MacNolia's experiences with the fame, pressure, and racist discrimination of the spelling competitions at every level. Smooth oil and spray paint illustrations emanate the characteristic warm richness of Morrison's art, and a balance between the neutral color palette and pops of jewel tones at key moments guides readers' emotional journey through the narrative. A foreword frames MacNolia's story with information about the racist ideas that underpinned the segregation of Black and white kids in spelling competitions, and an epilogue briefly describes MacNolia's later life and chronicles the efforts to integrate spelling bees, followed by a select bibliography. Despite stylistic similarities to Weatherford and Morrison's other biography collaboration R-E-S-PE-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul (BCCB 07/20), this story is superb in its own right, and would complement The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus (BCCB 11/14) in a social studies lesson that explores words through a human lens. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

An Exploratory Analysis of Scripps Spelling Bee Winners, 1925–2019: Is There Evidence of Asian American Overrepresentation?

AbstractThe model minority stereotype of Asian Americans, especially South Asian Americans, is central to society’s characterization of them as precocial spellers. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a prestigious event where the best spellers from across the United States face off in a high-stakes and highly-televised spelling competition. In this article, the researchers analyze the demographic and geographic characteristics of the winners of this competition. Included in the analyses are responses to questions such as: Are Scripps National Spelling Bee winners more likely to be males or females? Asians or non-Asians? And, what is the average age of winners? Results show that the demographic backgrounds of Scripps National Spelling Bee winners have changed over time, most acutely during the 1980s. Although Asian Americans have been winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee in record numbers in recent years, we problematize both the characterization that they are overrepresented as winners, and the characterization that they are “model minorities.”

Editor’s Introduction

The Journal of Minority Achievement, Creativity and Leadership (JMACL) is a window seat, an intellectual space for academics, policymakers, practitioners, researchers, students, and scholars to view the terrain in its variegated form and structure, especially those extant landmarks positioned at the intersection of achievement, creativity, and leadership. JMACL attempts to provide rhythmic syncopation to the cacophony of voices speaking to the complexities that diverse populations in general, and minoritized populations in particular, experience across the P–20 educational continuum and beyond. Through their collective and individual wisdom, contrib utors share best practices, conceptual models, and theoretical frameworks that illuminate asset-based approaches related to the achievement and success of minority populations. In this issue our authors include:Sharon LaVonne Fries Britt, PhD, and Felicia Onuma, in “The Role of Family, Race, and Community as Sources of Motivation for Black Students in STEM,” argue that understanding the sources of motivation that Black students identify as contributing to their persistence offers invaluable insights into ways to support student success in physics. Knowing the determinants of their commitment to remain in the major provide departments, faculty, advisors and mentors additional areas to reinforce and affirm.Jase Kugiya, Jorge Burmicky, PhD, and Victor B. Saenz, PhD, in “High-Achieving Latino Men and Men of Color Programs: Perspectives from Community College Program Staff,” explore two Men of Color (MoC) programs located at two Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) community colleges in Texas. Using two rounds of qualitative semi-structured interviews, a participant intake form, and an institutional questionnaire, this research applied Schreiner’s (2010) Thriving Quotient and Garcia’s (2018) Organizational Frameworks for Decolonizing HSIs to understand how MoC program staff define high-achievement and how MoC programs support high-achieving Latino men.Derrick Brooms, PhD, in “Black Cultural Capital, Resistance, and Leadership among Black Male Collegians,” examines the college experiences of 65 Black men who participated in a Black Male Initiative (BMI) program at three different colleges. Given the deficit and crisis narratives that dominate the discourse on Black males’ educational experiences and trajectories, more work is needed that attends to their strengths and assets as well as reveals new stories about their possibilities.Nicholas D. Hartlep, PhD, Daisy B. Ball, PhD, Kevin E. Wells, PhD, Hannah M. Wilk, and Brandon O. Hensley, PhD, in “An Exploratory Analysis of Scripps Spelling Bee Winners, 1925–2019: Is There Evidence of Asian American Overrepresentation?,” analyze the demographic and geographic characteristics of the winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Included in the analyses are responses to questions such as: Are Scripps National Spelling Bee winners more likely to be males or females? Asians or non-Asians? And, what is the average age of winners?Frank Tuitt, PhD, in “More than a Hashtag: Nurturing Black Excellence in Traditionally White Institutions,” provides some direction as to how traditionally white institutions (TWIs) can move away from superficial enactments of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and instead adopt a racial equity strategy that nurtures and values Black Excellence.Patricia E. Literte, PhD, in “Mobilizing Beyond Black and White: Coalition Building and Identity Formation Among Students of Color at a Public and a Private University,” examines coalition building between Black, Latinx, and Asian Pacific American students, as well as the construction of a panracial “people of color” identity, on two university campuses in California.Our desire is for JMACL to serve as a forum that provides practitioners, researchers, scholars, and individuals in contexts external to the Academy with dialectical space to explore achievement, creativity, and leadership across diverse communities. This issue, with its diverse array of contributors is emblematic of the type of transgressive scholarship that pushes boundaries and evokes new paradigms of thought. We encourage our readers to deconstruct the theoretical approaches and problematize the conceptual frameworks presented here. Hence, as JMACL helps us to know better, it is incumbent upon us to use this knowledge to do better.

Winning Spelling Bee Competition: The Representation of Black Girl in Akeelah and The Bee (2006) Movie

<p class="AbstractText">This research examines the representations of African-American stereotype and the struggle of Black American girl in National Spelling Bee contest in Hollywood movie entitled Akeelah and the Bee (2006). The use of African-American English (AAVE) is one of the stereotype often depicted in Hollywood movie. Race theories are used to examine the relationship between race, racism and power. Meanwhile, Roland Barthes’s theory and semiotic film theory are used to examine the meaning portrayed in the movie. Findings show that the representation of Akeelah as a successful participant in the spelling bee competition challenges the stereotype of African American as academic underclass, and as associated with crime, failure and frustration. Akeelah is represented as a successful African American girl as she assimilates (adopts) American values of change/mobility, time and its importance, action and work orientation. The assimilation is achieved through a mentoring process and support from African American community.</p><p class="AbstractText"> </p><p class="AbstractText"><em>Keywords</em>: African-American, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Stereotype, Spelling Bee</p>

Geographic Distribution of Scripps National Spelling Bee Spellers Resembles Geographic Distribution of Child Population in US States upon Implementation of the RSVBee “Wildcard” Program

The Scripps National Spelling Bee (SNSB) is an iconic academic competition for United States (US) schoolchildren, held annually since 1925. Historically, children qualified for the SNSB by winning a sponsored regional spelling bee. However, the sizes and geographic distributions of sponsored regions are uneven. One state may send more than twice as many spellers as another state, despite similar numbers in child population. In 2018, the SNSB introduced a wildcard program known as RSVBee, which allowed students to apply to compete as a national finalist, even if they did not win their regional spelling bee. This allowed more students to compete, but it was unknown how this would affect the geographic distribution of spellers. The purpose of our experiment was to test our hypothesis that the geographic distribution of SNSB national finalists more closely matched the child population of the US after RSVBee was implemented. We compared the number of sponsored (non-RSVBee) national finalists to the US child population from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, for the years 2012–2019 and found a stable, strong correlation in each year, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.741–0.774. With RSVBee in 2018 and 2019, we found the correlations increased significantly, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.916–0.917 for all spellers (p-value = 0.032 by paired t-test). We conclude that the RSVBee program significantly improved the geographic distribution of the SNSB by matching the geographic distribution of SNSB finalists to the child population of the US.

Freaks and Geeks: On the Provisional Citizenship of Indian American Spelling Bee Winners

This article examines the relationship between Indian dominance in the Scripps National Spelling Bee over the past decade and the increased cultural popularity of the bee as entertainment over this same period. Using the documentary film Spellbound (2002) and a range of media coverage, this article argues that on one hand, the Indian competitors are seen as geeks —model minorities who are proof of meritocracy. On the other, they are seen as racial freaks , allowing the audience to manage its anxieties about Asian ascendance. These dual narratives help to explain the popularity of the bee, and also demonstrate how the spelling bee kids attain a provisional citizenship. That is, they are bestowed cultural citizenship—and the power to represent that sometimes comes with it—as long as they act within the bounds of a dominant notion of American values. Once they are perceived to have moved beyond these boundaries, or when they under/overperform on the field of play, their inclusion is jeopardized or revoked.

Indian American Whiz Kids, an Update

I had drawn attention earlier to the extraordinary and outstanding performance of Indian American children in three prestigious contests open to all school children in the United States: the National Geographic Bee, Intel Science Talent Search and Scripps National Spelling Bee. The winners in each of them are awarded very handsome scholarships besides other items. That report covered up to 2014. Here, the performance of the Indian American school children in these three contests in the next two years (2015 and 2016) is presented.

Coming in First: Sound and Embodiment in Spelling Bees

The increasingly intense level of competition of the National Spelling Bee in recent years suggests that this “brain sport” has become a complex site for the politics of language standardization, media, and childhood competition. In this article I delve into this nexus to explore its heart: sound. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at spelling bees and with spellers, families, officials, and media broadcasters, I examine how spellers experience the word as a mélange of sounds, the embodied processes that inform their orthographic choices, and how this sensory process made viewable for media audiences who may know little about orthography. Employing what Steve Feld (2015) has called “acoustemology,” I analyze competitive spelling through the lens of “firstness,” a concept the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1955) identified as a mode of being replete with unmediated feelings and qualities. Two‐minute spelling bee turns serve as ethnographic examples of language materiality that reveal the complex routines that spellers undertake in each spelling bee round. This onstage sensorium also provides a basis upon which media broadcasters create metasemiotic frameworks through which to observe and understand the complexity this sensory activity.Video abstract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TOnAokn96E

Jasmine and the Bee: Spelling word-initial [t h ] in English

Jasmine was an American seventh grader whose first language (L1) is Punjabi and second language (L2) is English. A good speller, she tied for first place at her regional spelling bee. She maintains that she then correctly spelled the tie-breaking word: tomography . After requesting an instant video replay of her word, the judges declared Jasmine’s spelling incorrect: <d-o-m-o-g-r-a-p-h-y>. We examine three questions: Is Jasmine’s presumed-high word-recognition ability consistent with such an error? Did her L1 interfere with her L2 pronunciation? Did an L1-influenced pronunciation cause the judges to perceive her word-initial /t/ as [d]? After inquiring of Jasmine about the spelling event itself, we examined the considerable research on Indian English, spelling, speech production, and speech perception; we also audio-recorded Jasmine’s spoken language at various style levels to assess the degree to which Punjabi may be influencing her English pronunciation. The first question remains without a confirmed answer, though our assumption is that it is ‘no’. Work on Indian English indicates a probable ‘yes’ to the latter two questions. Spectrographic analysis of Jasmine’s word-initial English [t h ]-sounds demonstrates the shorter voice onset times associated with the nonaspirated /t/-sounds of Punjabi and Indian English. It is probable that Jasmine pronounced the ‘t’ [t h ] of tomography with little or no aspiration, and that the judges heard the near-unaspirated [t] as a [d]. Jasmine’s experience demonstrates that the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s sole reliance on dictionary pronunciations of Standard American English might well be adjusted to accommodate contestants who speak a nonstandard, or a standard but non-American, variety of English.

Peers, Pressure, and Performance at the National Spelling Bee

This paper investigates how individuals’ performances of a cognitive task in a high-pressure competition are affected by their peers’ performances. To do so, I use novel data from the National Spelling Bee, in which students attempt to spell words correctly in a tournament setting. Across OLS and instrumental variables approaches, I find that when the immediate predecessor is correct, a speller has a 13 to 64 percent greater probability of making a mistake, relative to the predecessor being incorrect. There is no evidence that the effect differs by gender and marginal evidence that it differs by experience.

Peers, Pressure, and Performance at the National Spelling Bee

This paper investigates how individuals' performances of a cognitive task in a high-pressure competition are affected by their peers' performances. To do so, I use novel data from the National Spelling Bee, in which students attempt to spell words correctly in a tournament setting. Across OLS and instrumental variables approaches, I find that when the immediate predecessor is correct, a speller has a 13 to 64 percent greater probability of making a mistake, relative to the predecessor being incorrect. There is no evidence that the effect differs by gender and marginal evidence that it differs by experience.

A Tribute to John Capehart, MD, “Sooner Proud” and 1961 National Spelling Bee Champion

Members of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, including allied health professionals and staff from transplant services, the anesthesia department, and the operating room, along with everyone at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, wish to honor John Capehart, MD, by congratulating him on the 50th anniversary of winning the National Spelling Bee. John was the first Oklahoman to claim this distinction, though his family very nearly dominated the contest for a decade. His brother in 1958 and his sister in 1964 were both finalists at the national competition. Anyone who knows John enjoys his witty sense of humor and crisp intellect. The operating room staff has enjoyed interacting with him during a myriad of thoracic, cardiovascular, and transplantation surgical procedures. John's distinction as spelling bee champion has commanded the utmost respect and admiration from his colleagues. The operating room staff regularly consults him regarding word etymology, origin, spelling, and appropriate usage. His uncanny ability to remember names, numbers, dates of birth of fellow surgeons, medical record numbers, as well as dates and details of surgery for transplant patients is unparalleled, and he has mastered a broad range of topics, from military history to sports and other historical events. It is these qualities that make John unique as a splendid and enchanting teller of tales—some of which are actually true.

Deliberate Practice Spells Success

The expert performance framework distinguishes between deliberate practice and less effective practice activities. The current longitudinal study is the first to use this framework to understand how children improve in an academic skill. Specifically, the authors examined the effectiveness and subjective experience of three preparation activities widely recommended to improve spelling skill. Deliberate practice, operationally defined as studying and memorizing words while alone, better predicted performance in the National Spelling Bee than being quizzed by others or reading for pleasure. Rated as the most effortful and least enjoyable type of preparation activity, deliberate practice was increasingly favored over being quizzed as spellers accumulated competition experience. Deliberate practice mediated the prediction of final performance by the personality trait of grit, suggesting that perseverance and passion for long-term goals enable spellers to persist with practice activities that are less intrinsically rewarding—but more effective—than other types of preparation.

Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S)

In this article, we introduce brief self-report and informant-report versions of the Grit Scale, which measures trait-level perseverance and passion for long-term goals. The Short Grit Scale (Grit–S) retains the 2-factor structure of the original Grit Scale (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007) with 4 fewer items and improved psychometric properties. We present evidence for the Grit–S's internal consistency, test–retest stability, consensual validity with informant-report versions, and predictive validity. Among adults, the Grit–S was associated with educational attainment and fewer career changes. Among adolescents, the Grit–S longitudinally predicted GPA and, inversely, hours watching television. Among cadets at the United States Military Academy, West Point, the Grit–S predicted retention. Among Scripps National Spelling Bee competitors, the Grit–S predicted final round attained, a relationship mediated by lifetime spelling practice.

An Insider’s Perspective on the National Spelling Bee: An Interview with James Maguire

The coeditors of Voices from the Middle talk with author James Maquire (The American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds) about the National Spelling Bee--its participants, its process, and its impact.

Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals.

The importance of intellectual talent to achievement in all professional domains is well established, but less is known about other individual differences that predict success. The authors tested the importance of 1 noncognitive trait: grit. Defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, grit accounted for an average of 4% of the variance in success outcomes, including educational attainment among 2 samples of adults (N=1,545 and N=690), grade point average among Ivy League undergraduates (N=138), retention in 2 classes of United States Military Academy, West Point, cadets (N=1,218 and N=1,308), and ranking in the National Spelling Bee (N=175). Grit did not relate positively to IQ but was highly correlated with Big Five Conscientiousness. Grit nonetheless demonstrated incremental predictive validity of success measures over and beyond IQ and conscientiousness. Collectively, these findings suggest that the achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.

And Now, the Indian Spelling Gene?

A LOT OF people noticed that not only was Kashyap, winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee this year, of ancestry but so were the first two runners-up. Children of descent have won first place in five of the last seven years, and this year they made up 30 of the 273 contestants, a proportion many times larger than their 0.66% of the population. I haven't yet heard anyone mention a gene, but it's probably only a matter of time. I have, though, heard people refer to Indians' interest in spelling competitions a craze. The origins of the craze hark back to 1985. In that year, Balu Natarajan became the first American student to win. His accomplishment was received both by the community here and in India in a way similar to the reaction of the Dominican Republic when Juan Marichal became a star pitcher. It could be done, and now everybody wanted to do it. And aspirants had some advantages, according to Madhulika Khandelwal, who runs the Asian American Center at Queens College. Their parents were generally well educated, often scientists or engineers; they spoke English and knew what education could do for social advancement. They were comfortable with the rote learning methods of their homeland, and they do not regard champion spellers nerds, wrote Joseph Berger in the New York Times. That last fact could certainly give the students a boost: the Scripps spelling bee was started in the first place to promote general interest among pupils in a dull subject. There are now some 60 chapters of a foundation that is designed generally to help Indians with English but that also sponsors many local bees. chat rooms and blogs about spelling abound: if you Google Indian spelling blogs, you'll garner 148,000 entries; Googling Anurag Kashyap yields 8,900. Berger points out that, in their passionate pursuit of spelling championships, parents are just being as single-minded other American parents, who have been known to help their fledgling gymnasts, tennis players, and singers. Maybe even more so on occasion. In the 1999 movie Spellbound, about the Scripps contest, one entrant, Neil Kadakia, tells of a relative back home who has hired 1,000 people to chant prayers for him during the bee and has promised to provide meals for 5,000 if he wins. Spellbound is a taut, wonderfully watchable movie, but, it delved deeply into the families behind some of the contestants, I couldn't help thinking of those years of monomaniacally obsessive preparation a form of child abuse. It seemed a little like stuffing grain down a goose to make foie gras. New York has outlawed foie gras production, and California, the only other U. S. source, is considering a ban. Balu Natarajan, by the way, is now 33, a doctor of sports medicine, and team physician for the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer. TIPS FOR READERS OF RESEARCH: HOW MEAN IS THE MEDIAN? Howard Wainer of the National Board of Medical Examiners called my attention to a June 29 article in the Virginian Pilot, which serves the Norfolk metropolitan area. The headline read, Teachers Practicing Zero Intolerance. Cute. It had nothing to do with violence or drugs. What reporter Mike Gruss had happened onto was a refusal by teachers to give out zeros--even for work not turned in. A zero, they argued, had too powerful an impact on a student's average grade. Some teachers would not give anything lower than a 50% or 60%, even for missing work. Gruss called it a victory over the law of It would be better to call it a loss to the wrong average. As Wainer pointed out in his e-mail, the problem was that teachers were using the mean to calculate their students' average grades. This problem would be much ameliorated--and even might disappear--if teachers switched to the median. The mean is the most common of three statistics, measures of central tendency, that all provide averages. …

The Buzz About the Bee: Winning the 1997 National Spelling Bee

Knossos Games Tim Boester (bio) Tim Boester Fascinated by mazes and puzzles, Tim Boester is also intrigued by roller coaster design. Tim is a senior at the University of Chicago, where he is studying math. Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University

EARLY AND CURRENT READING AND SPELLING PRACTICES OF GIFTED SPELLERS

This study continued investigating the early reading and spelling experiences as well as the spelling practices of the finalists in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, specifically the 1987 spellers who were considered gifted spellers. Two open-ended questionnaires were used: one for the parents of the spellers and one for the spellers. A follow-up telephone interview was conducted with a random sample of respondents. Results indicated that gifted spellers showed an early interest in language arts activities with 86% of the parents reporting that their children could read prior to formal schooling. The spellers considered themselves avid readers and indicated sophisticated metacognitive awareness whether reading or spelling. Results that suggested the spellers passed through developmental spelling stages far earlier than average children and relied on visual memory strategies, word meanings, and saying/writing words to master the orthography replicated findings from an earlier study.

Orthographic awareness and gifted spellers: Early experiences and practices

This study investigated the early literacy experiences and spelling practices of the finalists in the 1986 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, who were determined to be gifted spellers. Two open‐ended questionnaires were employed: one for the parents of the spellers and one for the spellers. Results indicated that gifted spellers show an early interest in language related activities such as reading, writing, and spelling and suggested that gifted spellers pass through developmental spelling stages far earlier than the average child. Results also indicated that gifted spellers rely on visual memory strategies, word meanings, and saying/writing words to master new words. The spellers in this study reported being in control of their efforts to master the orthography.