A big change is in store for this year’s Dedham Education Foundation Spelling Bee: it’s “all kids.”
“We used to have a round of kids and then a round of adult teams, and it was really hard to get the adult teams together, and people really did that out of guilt more than anything,” says Gemma Martin, the group’s president.
So the adult contest has been eliminated for the 2010 bee – the 17th organized by the Dedham Education Foundation.
Martin says she hopes four third-grade teams will compete against each other, as will four from the fourth grade, and four from the fifth grade. Superintendent of Schools June Doe will moderate that portion of the Spelling Bee.
Principal Debra Gately will moderate the middle school competition. The school is already divided into two teams from each grade during the academic year, and ideally there will be six teams in the Spelling Bee, Martin says.
The event will be held Friday, March 19 at 6:30 p.m. in the middle school auditorium. Admission is $3.
In addition to the student wordsmiths, Martin hoped to include “a round of teachers, because the kids all like to see their teachers up there competing.” But that was nixed, “as we did not get enough of a response.”
Proceeds go toward the grants of the Dedham Education Foundation, which mostly funds classroom enrichment programs. This year, the foundation has again provided grants to all levels of the Dedham public school system.
The foundation also gives funding to the Dedham High library – which usually receives $750 and buys popular paperbacks, “stuff that will get the kids in there and reading,” Martin says – and made possible the recent assemblies on cyberbullying for fifth- through twelfth-grade-students featuring John Halligan.
“We received $37,000 worth of grant requests this past fall, and we had budgeted to $20,000,” Martin says. “So the need always outweighs what we have to give.”
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
