Home-schoolers raising the Spelling Bee's buzz

VIRGINIA BEACH

Home-schoolers in the area play together, a few pray together, and for the better part of a decade, they've spelled together.

A group of well-wishers, some from other home-schooling families, gathered Friday to send off Caroline Willett, the regional champion who is representing The Virginian-Pilot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week. The competition runs today to Thursday.

Caroline will be one of 36 home-schooled students at the bee, or about 12 percent of the spellers. Three percent of students nationwide were home-schooled in 2007, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The strength of home-schooled spellers locally - Caroline's older sister, Rebecca, won the Pilot's bee the previous two years - might have much to do with the community's long support of spelling bees.

Harriett Bunch, who taught her four children, started a local bee for home-schoolers about eight years ago.

"When you home-school, you kind of want some academic extracurriculars for your kids," Bunch said.

By the second year, her bee attracted 60 contestants and still routinely draws about 40 competitors. "They're coming from all over Tidewater," she said.

Caroline, an 11-year-old Virginia Beach sixth-grader, learned about bees by watching her sister prepare and compete. "It seemed really cool," she said.

The Beach has 874 home-schooled students, plus 17 other students who have been exempted from school for religious reasons. The state has 22,621 home-schoolers.

Cherrie Moore owns a Virginia Beach store where many home-schooling families purchase textbooks.

"It used to be said spelling was the worst area for home-schoolers," she said. "We've been working on it over the years."

After a loss in her first home-school bee, Caroline began to study hard, she said. She won the next year.

But until three years ago, the local competition stopped there. Kim Willett, the girls' mother, began pushing the Pilot to sponsor a regional bee so a Hampton Roads student could go to nationals. The Ledger-Star, which later merged with the Pilot, sponsored spellers from 1955 to 1979.

The national bee began tracking home-school participation in the early 1990s, said director Paige Kimble. Numbers rose for a decade, then stabilized. Thirty-six home-schooled students competed last year, as well.

"Like all participants in the bee, they come from homes that emphasize educational achievement," Kimble said.

Caroline said she spends 60 to 90 minutes a day practicing spelling words with her parents. Her other passion, the violin, gets about 45 minutes to an hour of her day.

She said she has a bit more practice time because she doesn't ride a school bus. Friends in the home-schooling community also help her out by sending tough words to add to her practice list.

And for two years, she has also learned by observation, traveling with her family to Washington, D.C., to watch her sister compete.

This year, Caroline hopes it to make it to the semifinals on ESPN. Home-schoolers have twice won the national bee, in 1997 and 2000.

However far she makes it this week, she won't be alone.

"It's cool that there are other home-schoolers in the bee," Caroline said. "It's nice to know you're not the only one."

Lauren Roth, (757) 222-5133, lauren.roth@pilotonline.com.