One hundred and fifty-one participants, coming from thirty-two schools, spread across six grade levels. More than three hundred words were spelt over three days, each taking twenty seconds. That’s circa six thousand seconds (a hundred minutes, or nearly two hours) spent hearing participants – some as young as eight years old – say the word, spell it, and say the word again, hoping – always hoping – they’d got it right. A cruel task, time-keeping, swishing down on our spirits like a guillotine.

Sometimes, those twenty seconds felt like six thousand years – lost in the hex of aiming for perfection, cast jointly by the word-spelling student and a gasp-ready audience. In the silence, staccatoed with letters and pleas to repeat the word – in that hushed anticipation – we saw courage, effort, and belief in oneself. To stand alone, speak up, and risk being wrong: that’s the real value of our Spelling Bee competition.

And there was joy as well — friendships made and unmade as quickly as it took to step up on stage, then down again. Familiar faces from previous years offered quiet encouragement, while teachers, parents, and even strangers cheered inwardly (to do so aloud was verboten) for their favourites. In the end, everyone could hold their heads high for the bravery they had shown.

We’d like to thank all the people that made it possible for our Spelling Bee to succeed this year. We had nearly 20% more participants this year compared to last, which posed a challenge to all our host schools. As the title of this post reads: we’re making our hive’s buzz grow, one word at a time!

The British Royal School: Francisca Tapia, María José Ossa, Marta García, Svetlana Griazova, all their internal collaborators and their students. You’ve made us all feel as welcome as ever.

The Colegio San Nicolas Diácono: Loreto Lillo, Alicia González, Claire Kamerling, Javiera Vega, Josefina Essmann and anybody else we might be criminally forgetting. Thank you for hosting us for the first time and making everybody feel nice and cozy!

The Colegio Pumahue Chicureo: Andrea Correa, Alejandra Rodriguez, Nicole Quiñones, Juan Contreras, Tatiana Bustos and so many others we hope we aren’t forgetting about. Thank you once again for stepping up and getting out the best in everybody!

Thank you tremendously to Andrea Valdivieso, from Lincoln International Academy, who officiated as MC on the first two days; and Andrés Rillón, from Librería Inglesa, who officiated on the third.

A special thanks goes to all our judges, who sometimes had to make incredibly difficult decisions and tell students on stage that they had to sit down because of minute details. Big applause to: 1st Day: Hannah Stewart, (Education USA), Cecilia García, Ilia Piccione; 2nd Day: Karina Contreras (American British School), María Paz Rivera (ESU), Natacha Pardo (English UC) 3rd Day: Alicia Paez (PUC), Karina Contreras (American British School) and Paola Sanz (American British School).

We’d also like to thank our sponsors Librería Inglesa and Bookland, who provided us with some prizes for our winners.