ADDED: The winner, Zaila Avant-garde, considers herself more of a basketball player than a speller:
“Basketball, I'm not just playing it. I'm really trying to go somewhere with it. Basketball is what I do,” Zaila said. “Spelling is really a side thing I do. It's like a little hors d'ouevre. But basketball's like the main dish.”
She holds 3 records — having to do with dribbling multiple balls — in the Guinness Book of World Records.
As for her unusual last name, we're told that her "father changed her last name to Avant-garde in honor of jazz musician John Coltrane." ("The Avant-Garde" is an album title.)
ALSO: I'm sure Avant-garde knows how to spell "hors d'oeuvre," but it's misspelled in the article about her! That's an Associated Press article at NOLA.com. You would think that they'd take special pains about spelling when writing about a spelling champ. And everyone knows that "hors d'oeuvre" is a hard word. Check the spelling!
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Temujin writes:
"How cute is she? And...home schooled. I wonder how different her life would have been had she gone to Louisiana public schools. I feel proud that I would have gotten one of the two last words correct."
I'll say:
Would you want your child to spend 7 hours a day learning to spell 10,000 words?
If you knew someone doing home schooling was spending 7 hours a day on spelling, would you approve of the balance of the educational program?
Whiskeybum writes:
"An ‘oeuvre’ in French is ‘a work’, such as a work of art, or in the case of the phrase ‘hors d'oeuvre’, the main work (of art) of the chef: the main dish or meal. Hors d'oeuvre translates as ‘outside of the work’ or ‘outside of the main meal’, and is synonymous with ‘appetizer’ in English.
"And as long as we’re on the subject of French table service vocabulary, the French word ‘entrée’ has a different meaning than what is commonly understood in English. A French ‘entrée’ is the typically small dish that is served before the main course, i.e., the dish that is used to ‘enter’ the main meal. In English, we’ve somehow taken this term to mean the main dish itself."
Temujin replies to my questions:
"The quick answer is that no- I would not subject my kid to multiple hours a day learning to spell words. That said...
"The school year is a long year. And a homeschooler can set up their own schedule. I don't know how many days, weeks, months she spent on learning to spell words. But, I suspect that also included word roots, bases of language, which, let's face it, is not something 99.9% of kids today know anything about. And I also suspect that a parent who wanted their kid to be the best speller in the nation would also want their kid to excel in other areas of knowledge, not to mention sports (as she is doing).
"You can tell a lot about a person by how they talk. You can see it in their eyes. This is a bright girl. She may not know all of the curriculum taught in public schools, but then, we don't know that, do we? We don't know what she knows and what she doesn't. But we do know she can spell. She can tell a word from it's Greek or Latin root. She excels in basketball and juggling. This is a person who excels in a number of things.
"I'd place my bet on her having a great future."
"You can tell a lot about a person by how they talk. You can see it in their eyes...."
Who is the man who comes up on the stage to put his arm around her? Is that her father or a coach? I don't know, but she seems to shrug him off and seems not to like him too much.
Temujin write:
"I don't know who that other person is. I would think it's her dad, but it could be her coach. It seems as if that person has been instructed to stand off to the side, not in view of the close up camera when the trophy is awarded. So when the CEO of Scripps is awarding the trophy, there is only Zaila and the CEO on camera.
"I looked for her shrugging off that other person and I did not see it. I viewed the video a few times. Am I missing it? What I saw was her nervous energy as she paced in place. And the other person standing, as if ordered to, on the far side, looking like he wanted to be in the picture.
"I like when you hear her saying 'I got it!" as the CEO was attempting to 'help' her hold the trophy. She is very sure of herself!"
I rewatched. What I see is the lack of a full embrace, just an arm around her back, and she pulls down and out and away very soon after it starts. It's not complete revulsion, but it's what looks to me like a disconnect intended to be polite and unobtrusive. It made the same impression on me both times I saw it.
Left Bank of the Charles writes:
"“If you don't have no schooling you are up against it in this country, sis. That is the way of it. No sir, that man has no chance any more. No matter if he has got sand in his craw, others will push him aside, little thin fellows that have won spelling bees back home.”
"Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (Charles Portis)"
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