EASTHAM — In this town where the elderly population is growing and enrollment at the elementary school is steadily falling, young and old join forces every spring in a spelling competition.
The annual seniors and fifth-graders spelling bee took place at the Eastham Senior Center on Friday, April 12. A crowd of about 50, including the entire fifth grade from Eastham Elementary, was there for the event, which was moderated by Linda Reed, a member of the Council on Aging board, and Kat Williams, a fifth-grade teacher.
Five teams of six people competed, each with three seniors and three fifth-graders. In each round, one member of the team would rise to spell a word. In the next round, the next member of the team took a turn, and so on. The bee proceeded through 24 rounds in this fashion, so that each team member spelled four words.
The moderators provided helpful hints. For the word “subject,” Reed’s hint was “If you spell this word incorrectly, you will be the subject of scorn.” The audience laughed.
In the final round, each team was given a word to consider as a group. The teams pooled their knowledge, with gray heads huddling next to the smaller heads of fifth-graders.
Team Three was in the lead after 24 rounds with 22 points (for 22 words spelled correctly), with Team Four right behind at 21 points. But Team Four tied the score by correctly spelling “attendance,” while Team Three lost its chance to win by misspelling “persistence” as “persistance.”
Bill Bristol of Team Three, a retired history teacher who lives in Eastham and Duxbury, said his entire team was stumped on “persistence.” He jokingly blamed his wife, Melissa, for not knowing better as a retired Latin teacher.
The two teams duked it out through four tie-breaker rounds. Reed worried that she was “running out of words!” As each team spelled another word correctly — including “dependence,” “rodeo,” and “clause” — the room seemed to hold its collective breath.
Finally, Michael Callahan, 10, gave Team Four the victory by spelling “radiance” correctly, while Team Three lost by spelling “relied” incorrectly as “relyed.”
The room erupted in applause as Michael grinned — with radiance.
“At first, I thought I was going to be wrong,” he said afterward. “But then she said it was OK. I just felt really happy.”
Michael’s grandmother Gail Callahan, 86, was in the audience. He is the youngest of her 10 grandchildren. “It was so exciting!” she said.
Fifth-grade teacher Tracey Deegan has long been involved with the local Council on Aging in her 31 years of teaching.
“About 20 years ago, one gentleman suggested we do a geography bee,” she said. “He authored his own geography books and would give them away as prizes. And that’s when this got started.” The geography bee slowly became a spelling bee, though Deegan could not recall when that happened.
After the bee, the students lined up to get back on their school bus, buzzing with the excitement of competing with new friends and spellers.
For Deegan, maintaining a relationship between the school and the COA is a way for students to interact with seniors who are still active. She called it a “cross-generational opportunity to have fun with learning.”
Deegan said that students who are ordinarily more timid in the classroom spoke up more at the spelling bee. “It’s an opportunity for them to see that it’s OK to be wrong,” she said. “In this atmosphere, it’s more like an adventure. They see some of the adults messing up,” which she said adds to their confidence.
