A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to
participate in a Spelling Bee with four of my students. To be honest, I wasn’t super pumped
about this project. Sure, it was a
spelling bee. Whatever. I’d probably have a few students
participate and it would be just something else for my English club to focus on
for a few weeks. But life is funny
in that way where the things you least expect to enjoy turn out to be one of
your most memorable experiences.
The students were given a list with about 300 words with
varying degrees of difficulty. My
four students struggled during our first few practices and I wasn’t too
optimistic about the results of this competition. However, as the weeks went on my students really surprised
me and studied that list like their lives depended on it. At the provincial spelling bee, two of
my students placed first in their grade division, meaning they got to travel to
Phnom Penh for the national spelling bee!
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| My student, Raisy, getting ready for the Provincial Spelling Bee |
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| Choyi spelling a word P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y at the National Spelling Bee |
Needless to say, they were very excited. There were tears of joy and also tears
of disappointment from those who were not able to move on. This was an entirely new experience for
most of my students, since competition is not commonplace in Cambodian
culture. While men will sometimes
compete while they play sports, there are few other games that are as intense
as say…Monopoly Deal. Even
competing for grades is not really a common practice since the “sharing” of
answers on tests is rampant throughout classrooms and seen almost as a
necessity.
This brought me to think about America and how
competition-driven our culture is.
I’ve been competing in things since preschool, and probably even before
then. And while competition has
taught me a lot (for example, how to take awesome photos with trophies) it
hasn’t always fostered the greatest sense of community. Constantly competing for better grades
or better mock trial parts or a better job definitely drives people to do
better, but does it really make us better people?
But I hope my students’ experience in this competition will
be remembered very similar to how I remember the various competitions
throughout my life. I can’t tell
you every grade I’ve ever gotten or what my scores were in my 8th
grade History Day Competition. I
can’t tell you what place my broadcast news team got at the speech club
competition in Des Moines and I can’t even tell you what place we got in most of
our mock trial tournaments (key word being, “most”). But I can tell you about that time I thought my professor
wrote “baller!” on my mid-term essay, but what she actually wrote was “better!” I can laugh about that time I put
waaaay too much cornstarch in my hair to try and look more like Eleanor
Roosevelt for my six-page monologue at the State History Day Competition. And I will always remember those crazy
road trips to various mock trial tournaments with jumbo Slurpies and ridiculous
poses for team photos.
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| That courtroom was a battlefield |
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| Headed to the Night Market in Phnom Penh! |
So I hope my students remember the new friends they met,
that time they went to the night market in Phnom Penh, and the awesome library
the competition was held in. And
hey, if they remember that they are also both the 2nd best spellers
in their grade division in the nation, then that’s okay too.
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| Choyi and Raisy having some fancy ice cream! |
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