Homeschooler Wins National Spelling Bee

Posted on Friday 1 June 2007 at 9:45 AM in Homeschooling - Post Comment

There were five homeschoolers in the 80th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee when the field was narrowed down to the final 15 for the prime time broadcast.  I didn't watch the whole thing (forgot it was on) but did catch the end of it when 13 year old Nate Gartke from Canada misspelled the word "coryza" (he spelled it "choryza").  13 year old homeschooler Evan O'Dorney correctly spelled "serrefine" to win.  The other homeschoolers in the final 15 were No. 5: 14-year-old Jonathan Horton of Gilbert, Ariz.; No. 12: 12-year-old Tia Natasha-Elizabeth Thomas of Coarsegold, Calif.; No. 47: 14-year-old Joseph Henares of Avon, Conn.; and No. 161: 12-year-old Matthew Evans of Albuquerque, NM.  I was also excited to see No. 135: 13-year-old Nithya P. Vijayakumar of Canton, Mich.  Canton is close to my old stomping grounds and very close to where hubby used to work before we moved to Indiana.

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/23529

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bee1jun01,1,2127363.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

Update: 
B-I-A-S: Media Largely Ignore Spelling Bee Champ's Homeschooled Status
http://newsbusters.org/node/13148

Awesome

Posted by Chas on Friday 1 June 2007 at 10:14 AM - Link

Isn't that just awesome!!! It makes me so excited to hear about homeschoolers making great accomplishments!
Blessings,
Chas

Untitled Comment

Posted by gokings13 on Friday 1 June 2007 at 3:48 PM - Link

Funny, I read in the Indianapolis Star a HUGE write up about the Spelling Bee......It mentioned the counties the kids were from, but not what school they were from.
I found that very strange.
Either ALL of the kids were home schooled, and the 'left' doesn't want to mention that OR some of the kids were home schooled, therefore, they just didn't mention where ANYONE went to school so no one noticed how biased the paper is toward home educators OR none of them were from home schools and they simply didn't mention where the children went to school..........the latter I highly doubt was the case!!
:-)
Laura

You're right...

Posted by annre on Friday 1 June 2007 at 4:28 PM - Link

...and I found an article that discusses just that:

B-I-A-S: Media Largely Ignore Spelling Bee Champ's Homeschooled Status
http://newsbusters.org/node/13148