The Ultimate Spell Check

By Felix Li

January 5, 2026

This year’s Jericho Middle School Spelling Bee champion was eighth-grade student Stephen Yuan. After consistently spelling words correctly for over an hour on the JMS auditorium stage, his hard work paid off when he was the last one standing among the group of student class representatives.

Before the competition, students in grades 6, 7, and 8 participated in a class-wide spelling bee. After explaining the rules of the bee, teachers asked students to spell words ranging from easy to difficult. Those who won their classwide bee were qualified to represent their classes for the JMS school spelling bee, where they competed against other class representatives. Once the day of the spelling bee arrived, spectators and supporters eagerly arrived at the auditorium for the competition. Spellers sat on stage in front of a huge crowd of students and teachers, spelling words given by the judges. As each round passed, the number of spellers decreased. After several rounds, the remaining spellers advanced to the semi-finals. At last, the two remaining finalists took turns spelling words until a contestant spelled a word incorrectly. Both spellers then alternated their attempts to spell the word until one prevailed, an additional word was spelled correctly, and a champion was crowned.

The spelling bee is a valuable opportunity for students to build their confidence. As eighth-grade ELA teacher Ms. Scalera, who organizes the annual spelling bee, remembers, “I was a participant in my own school spelling bees… and can remember the words that made me go out. It seemed like a fun way to apply my knowledge of English in a competitive setting.” Similar to performing in a concert, spelling bees require students to display their knowledge in front of an audience. Both concerts and spelling bees can also help students build their courage and so that they feel more comfortable on stage.

Spelling bees are great opportunities for both competitors and audiences to expand their vocabulary. Being a proficient speller is still extremely important even with the rise of AI. According to Ms. Scalera, “Knowing how to spell in English can help you recognize the roots of those words in other languages and even help you to identify their meaning, in some cases.  I’ve also noticed that oftentimes, even though we have AI, it does not pick up the spelling errors. If you type a different word that is actually a word, it doesn’t pick up the word as an error even though it’s not the word the student intended.” Although AI might be evolving, human editors still have an edge. Sometimes, going back to basics still creates the best results.