Nasrullah Muhammadi needed to slow down.
As he sped through a list of competition words the day before the Akron Public Schools’ spelling bee, the eighth grader at Jennings Community Learning Center was tripping over his letters.
Nasrullah spelled vocabulary words like harrowing, goober and memorandum, and Karen Dugan, an intervention specialist, wanted to make sure he didn’t plan to down an energy drink before the actual competition.
“Don’t have coffee or anything tomorrow night,” she told him. “You’re going so fast, I’m afraid you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
Nasrullah wasn’t concerned. This was just practice. He already had bragging rights as the school champion. Still, as the bell rang, Nasrullah asked Dugan if she could pull him out of class later that day.
There was more to learn.
“The kids are a lot smarter and the words are harder,” he said of the next round.
Nasrullah’s turn competing in a spelling competition marks the continuation of a long Akron history with what is now the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A century after an APS student was one of the original nine to participate in the competition, the district is returning to the bee after a decades-long absence.
In 1925, Helen Fisher, a student at Portage Path Elementary School, won the inaugural Akron spelling bee and went on to Washington, D.C. Since then, a dozen additional Akron students have advanced to the nation’s capital to compete.
They include MacNolia Cox, a 1936 Akron spelling bee champion from Colonial School in Kenmore who was among the earliest Black spellers on the national stage. She finished fifth.
Despite Akron’s history with the bee, the connection waned — the last person to represent APS at the national bee was Vicki Speegle, in 1980. School officials believe it’s been 30 years since APS students spelled on stage at all.
That changed this year. In the 101st year of the bee’s existence, it’s again possible that an APS student could be a spelling bee champion.
“It just seemed like something was missing,” said Cheryl Powell, the executive editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, which has sponsored the bee locally for all 101 years. “Just a kid from Akron winning the spelling bee — wouldn’t that be great?”
Going to the district competition
Tuesday evening, 10 students from APS middle schools — all of them, school champions — will try to best each other, and the dictionary, to be named the best speller in the school district.
One of them is Nasrullah, who practiced Monday with Dugan, who is coordinating that school’s bee.
Complementary, bumblebee, exaggerate, boogie-woogie, pageantry, whirlybird, excursion — Dugan jumped around the word list while Nasrullah, a soccer and volleyball player with a mop of dark hair and a quick smile, fidgeted in his seat, trying to balance his desire to win with his tendency to mix up his Is and Es.
The 14-year-old, who was born in Afghanistan, came to the U.S. at age 4, not speaking English. He considers himself a jokey person, and said no one expected him to win at the school level. But Nasrullah said he thought spelling was easy and enjoyed beating his friends in the competition.
He said he was hesitant to go to the district-wide bee. After spelling “propaganda” correctly, though, he’s been bragging. The trophy is in his living room.
Now?
“I want to win. I already told all my friends I’m going to win,” Nasrullah said. “If I win, to represent Akron is going to be a big achievement.”
Nasrullah said he’d rather play games than study words, but he’s already learned prefixes and suffixes that he thinks will help him in the future.
“It’s not more about memorizing,” he said. “It’s about knowing how to spell.”
Part of a year of literacy in Akron schools
For APS, it’s about more than that. The school district is focusing on a year of literacy after falling short in the category on the state report card, Superintendent Mary Outley said.
Outley was a spelling bee coordinator in her early days as a teacher, at Simon Perkins Junior High School, but she doesn’t recall the district having a spelling bee after she changed schools in 1997.
She said restoring the program was one of her priorities.
While the district’s report card focused on early literacy, Outley said she wanted to help build a love of reading across all grade levels. Increasing vocabulary helps with reading comprehension, she said, something that can shape students for years.
The competition also builds other techniques as students learn to break words down, sound them out and learn the prefixes and suffixes, as Nasrullah was. It helps with stamina and discipline.
Plus, there’s the confidence it builds. Outley saw it with her sister, who still mentions that she was the best speller in her class at Crouse CLC (and in her family).
“I had students, it really helped them come out of their shell,” Outley said. “I just saw this transformation of confidence and just being willing to try.”
‘The only trophy I ever got’
It’s an experience that stuck with Wendy Lampner, the director of Online, Continuing, and Professional Education at the University of Akron. For years after her 1981 victory in the Akron Spelling Bee’s district 1, Lampner kept the first-place trophy on her desk.
Eighth grade was a tough year — Lampner’s mother was treated for cancer earlier in the year, and, on the day of the spelling bee, her father was hospitalized following a heart attack. He wanted her to compete anyway.
Lampner spelled “calamitous” then “impeccable” correctly to best a competitor who also had a parent in the hospital, she recalled — that speller’s mother was having a baby the day of the bee. When she got home, she called her dad to tell him. The next day, she brought him a copy of the Akron Beacon Journal with her face on the cover.
At the next round of competition, she misspelled “albeit” and didn’t advance out of the regional championship, but Lampner said she continues to appreciate the experience, which included receiving a letter from her fourth grade teacher that she still has.
“That recognition of all that academic knowledge — it’s the only trophy I ever got,” she said. “I feel sad they didn’t do it for 30 years. I’m glad they’re bringing it back.”
Lampner said she might volunteer to help out next year.
“It helps in ways that aren’t as obvious,” she said. “I got so many other things from that experience.”
‘You should see the smiles’
The Akron Beacon Journal sponsors a four-county region that includes Summit, Wayne, Medina and Portage counties, but it was mostly the suburban schools that have participated in recent years.
That always bothered Laura Kessel, the regional bee coordinator for the Beacon Journal.
“Akron should have Akron city schools,” she said. “To me, the biggest goal of the spelling bee process would be to have a kid on the final night with a sign that says Akron Beacon Journal,” she said, referring to the placards students wear around their necks as they spell.
The newspaper has sponsored five winners — the third most in the country, said Tyler Hyde, the brand strategy manager for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The most recent was William Kerek in 1964, a Cuyahoga Falls resident. The region has also had two runners up, most recently Marjory Lavery from Copley in 1995.
Ohio helps to offset the cost of registering for the competition using lottery money, Kessel said, and this year, the cost to participate was just $75 per school. Kessel said she told Powell it was the year to try to get APS back on board.
They reached out to Carla Chapman, APS’ chief of community relations and strategic engagement, who was skeptical about being able to pull it off. Outley encouraged her, she said.
“This is something for our young people to remember forever,” Chapman said. “Being our building’s spelling bee champion — you should see the smiles.”
Who moves on in the spelling competition?
At least 30 students participated at each of the 10 schools. The district bee, Chapman said, is strictly a city championship — the winner isn’t guaranteed to advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Instead, Kessel said, the 70 or so winners across the region will take a 25-question test to determine the 10 who will move on to the regional competition next month at the main branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library.
Chapman hopes there’s an APS student in the mix.
“What if one of our students qualifies for the regional? What if they win it?” she asked. “We’re going to D.C.”
Akron has more history with the bee, too, Hyde said. A former University of Akron professor, Caesar Carrino, was the associate pronouncer of the spelling bee from 1981 until 1990.
Hyde said the organization has been thinking a lot about its legacy as it approached a century. She said it’s exciting to think about a whole district of kids getting access to the organization, especially considering APS was there at the beginning.
“That’s an incredible legacy to have,” Kessel said. “To know it goes back that far is something you protect and hold very close.”
‘There’s so much history’
When she agreed to take on the work, Chapman didn’t know about Akron’s many links to the bee. Neither did Toan Dang-Nguyen, the district’s K-12 English Language Arts supervisor.
Talking to a reporter last week, both said they were wowed by the series of connections. Dang-Nguyen, who competed as a student at Mason Elementary School when she was still an English learner, said it was exciting to know more about APS’ spelling past.
“There’s so much history with the involvement,” she said. “Being able to be part of it, to help enhance oral speaking skills, vocabulary — it’s a wonderful thing.”
If it goes well, Outley said, she could see the competition moving down to the elementary level, too. There is no lower age limit to participate in the spelling bee, but students cannot compete past the eighth grade.
And if an APS student does make it to the national competition?
“It would be amazing,” Outley said. “We may have to ask the mayor if we can have a parade.”
Akron Public Schools students competing in the district spelling bee
- Jared Craig – Bridges CLC
- Naomi Cooper – Buchtel CLC
- Jeremiah Spearman – East CLC
- Zoey Dennis – Hyre CLC
- Gisselle Del Valle Valle – I Promise School
- Theodore Adkins – Innis CLC
- Nasrullah Muhammadi – Jennings CLC
- Imira Cobb – Litchfield CLC
- Amelia Loretitsch – Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts
- Emily Shvets – National Inventors Hall of Fame STEM Middle School