‘Negative’ is positive for local spelling bee winner

Brian Lieberman had a thick packet of vocabulary words to help him prepare for his school’s spelling bee, but he didn’t study it very much -- just a few minutes at lunch and recess before the big event. The Adams Elementary School fifth-grader also said that despite being a gifted student, he isn’t an avid reader.

At the end of Adams’ third annual spelling bee on Friday, however, Brian emerged as the school champion.

So what was his secret to success?

“I’m kind of on the computer a lot,” said Brian, 10. “On the Internet, they have a lot of words.”

Not every website can boast impeccable spelling, but Brian must have been looking at the right ones. In eight rounds in the school multipurpose room, he nailed “confidential,” “command,” “calendar,” “minimum,” “behavior,” “paragraph,” “experiment” and “negative” -- the last one securing the win when his opponent finally missed a word.

The Adams spelling bee, held before an audience of parents and other students, featured 12 fourth- and fifth-graders who had won the competitions in their classrooms. Principal Candy Cloud sat at a judges table on one end of the stage and announced the words to students, who faced elimination if they got one wrong.

The contest might have ended much sooner if the principal hadn’t done a little editing. The packet of vocabulary words given to each student included such graduate-school items as “ichthyologist,” “chrysanthemum” and “comptroller” -- which Cloud passed over.

“One year, we just went down the list and in the first round, everybody sat down,” she recalled.

At least two recent movies -- the documentary “Spellbound” and the drama “Bee Season” -- have depicted the cutthroat nature of national spelling bees. In the latter film, a college professor played by Richard Gere pressures his daughter to study vocabulary for weeks when he realizes that she may be a child prodigy.

At Adams, Cloud said that she hoped students and parents took the contest a little more lightly.

“This is just the fun part,” she said. “We try to put it that way. Our society puts so much emphasis on the winning rather than the activity.”

Indeed, all 12 classroom champions in the spelling bee received certificates for participating, and medals went to the top spellers in the fourth and fifth grade -- 9-year-old Cassi Dillon and Brian, respectively. Cloud said the final round of the bee, in which the two winners faced off, was mostly for show.

The front row of the auditorium was reserved for parents, some of whom had helped their children to study the material.

Marilyn Zilka, whose daughter Jenny Lee was among the fifth-grade contestants, videotaped the event for posterity.

Even though Jenny Lee didn’t make it to the final round, her mother said the event was worthwhile.

“It’s a tool to learn to deal with disappointment with no real-life consequences,” she said. “We’ll go out and have a mommy- daughter banana split anyway.”20060204iu4zk3ncWENDI KAMINSKI / DAILY PILOT(LA)Cassi Dillon, right, waits to hear from Principal Candy Cloud if she spelled a word correctly. Brian Lieberman, left, was Adams Elementary’s fifth-grade winner; Dillon won in fourth grade.