Ship #9 by GJ

Brian Snyder is the former principal of tiny, Lake Monroe Christian Academy. This school is primarily for the children of New Tribes Missionaries, the organization that daughter Nancy is retired from. (May the grammar muses forgive me the prepositional sin?)

I substituted at the academy for about five years and got to know the Snyder family pretty well. Early on, I volunteered to help with the annual spelling bee, and found that Brian and I agreed that the bee was flawed. How, we asked ourselves, could it be fair if kids were asked to spell different words? Some are inherently more difficult, we felt. Some are spelled just like they sound, and some have cute little non-vocal traps.

We struggled for three or four years, and then hit upon a cure. We escorted each student to and from a distant room so that they could not hear the words announced before their turns. It worked well. And everybody knew exactly why the winner won…he or she had correctly spelled the same word that everybody else had missed! OK, so there is no system without its flaws. We must, however, do ALL we can to smooth out the field for the sake of fairness.

I occasionally suffer a little pang of regret that I couldn't have been involved in the school when I was younger. Teaching effectiveness is geared toward human functions, and it is these that diminish, oh so soon. (May the wisdom muses forgive my dabbling?)