Can you spell kukri? That’s k-uk-k-r-i. It’s a specialized curved knife the kind that would be used by Ghurkhas. You may not know it but today an 11 year old at the Coca Cola National Spelling Bee knew how to spell it. After he won, the very young men told me it wasn’t that tough, really.
Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
There was good reason for teacher Colland Galvez of Our Lady of Guadalupe Roman Catholic Primary School to celebrate after all their standard sixth student Christopher Castillo had just been announced as the winner of the 2009 National Coca Cola Spelling Bee. Christopher Castillo who is only eleven years old was also the youngest child in the four hour long competition. But the most proud supporters were the champion’s parents Raul and Glenise Castillo who credits their son’s accomplishment to what they did well before he was born that blessed him with a gift to succeed.
Glenise Castillo, Proud Mom
“When Chris started preschool he was reading already and so and really Raul read to him when I was pregnant, every day every night and when he was born every night we read to him and so it was something, he was on the computer by age one and reading by age three and so it is something that he loves.”
Raul Castillo, Proud Father
“As a matter of fact I am a firm believer in prenatal learning and I did it with all my children and I must say that I am very proud of all of them. Certainly as far as Christopher is concerned, we pushed the reading part from early. At age one he had his own full library and was able to read before he even got into preschool. In fact in preschool he used to be put in charge of reading stories to his classmates and he has always been a source of pride for us.”
In fact young Christopher says while there were big words to spell because he started to read from a very early age he wanted to be challenged by the competition but…..
Jacqueline Godwin,
You are the youngest participant. Because of your age, were you feeling nervous that the older boys and girls would have beaten you to this?
Christopher Castillo, First Place Winner
“Well it wasn’t really the age that got me nervous, it was that I was expecting harder words.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
Harder words?
Christopher Castillo,
“Yeah, I mean most of these words I’ve heard already.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
He had expected more difficult words. Are you surprised?
Nicholas Pollard Jr., Sales/Marketing Manager – Bowen & Bowen
“No you know, I was at the district finals in Cayo and I knew that he was going to be one of the tough contestants.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
You too were both surprised.
Glenise Castillo,
“Yes we were looking for the challenge words and we thought that he
was going to get the ones that were spelt one way and pronounced another way and so with families, with friends, everybody was sending him little words. We went on the internet and we were looking for words so we thought that the words that came were kinda easy because we had a list.”
Second and third pace went to two students of Libertad Seventh Day Adventist School in the Corozal District. Erwin Sedacy and Aaron Magana. Thirteen year old Sedacy may have been short on words and camera shy but this student who plans to attend Corozal Community College is just happy to be among the top three good spellers.
Jacqueline Godwin,
Erwin how much time did you spend preparing yourself for this competition?
Erwin Sedacy, Second Place Winner
“About two weeks.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
Was it difficult?
Erwin Sedacy,
“The list was kind of difficult, the reserve was more harder.”
According to Bowen and Bowen’s Sales and Marketing Manager Nicholas Pollard Jr., he is happy to report that not only the students performance have improved for the past five years but he can finally say they have managed to increase the level of difficulty in the national annual spelling bee that is now comparable to the international spelling committee in the United States and the children are now ready to compete with their peers from CARICOM but that there is always room for improvement.
Nicholas Pollard Jr.,
“That because the words are so much more difficult, we need to look at the coaching element. We need to make sure that the coaches know the words, that they are looking up the origin of the words.”
And while our youngest winner may not have immediate plans to compete in any international spelling bee competition because all he wanted was to win the contest that not only got him the computer he wanted but the opportunity to attend the school of his choice saint john’s college…and would you believe it all started off with a bet following a conversation he had with his mom.
Glenise Castillo,
“Boy you think I have money like that and he said, ‘well I can try.’ And then I said how and he said I will enter a spelling bee contest and they have tuition there and I didn’t pay it any attention, and he wanted a laptop, and twelve o’clock he called me and he said ‘mommy, I am changing my uniform.’ So I said why, what’s happening? He said I am entering the spelling bee competition and I am like, where, how you mean, why you didn’t tell us before. He said because I want to go to SJC, you don’t understand I want to go to SJC. It was his zeal to want to come to Belize. So we are not sure if he would be able to handle it and so we said prove to us that you can handle Belize City and I said we will have to look at finance and he said I can handle the finance for school if you can give me just the yes. So I told him that you get there and you will go.”
Christopher Castillo was among eleven students that represented primary schools from all six districts.
And for winning, Castillo will get that scholarship and a laptop computer.
