Charter School Hosts First-Ever Creek Spelling Bee

Brooke Osceola Claims Victory, Puente Takes Second

By Susan Etxebarria

BRIGHTON — Eight jittery contestants lined up in front of an audience of fellow students, teachers and parents to compete in Pemayetv Emakakv’s first-ever Creek spelling bee on May 19.

Competitors Kalgary Johns, Brooke Osceola, Layne Thomas, Donovan Osceola, Reed Gopher, Anthony Johns, Ruben Burgess and Jaden Puente won first place in their classroom competition prior to the main event.

Though only eight competed in the spelling bee, each Pemayetv Emakakv Charter School student has completed nearly nine months of Creek language classes, with 45 minutes of daily instruction, Monday through Friday.

The language teachers watched with pride, thrilled to see how much the children learned in their classes. Teaching the native language is an integral part of the school’s mission and a required instructional component of the charter license.

Language Teacher Lorene Gopher, and director of the Cultural Education Dept., prepared lists for the children to study for the spelling bee. She said the students studied the vocabulary for about a month prior to the competition.

“I always tell my students, first you must master the sounds of the A, C and E’s, and you can say and spell any words that you learn in your language,” said Gopher. “If you can say the word, you can spell it; that’s one of our mottos.”

During the competition, Gopher facilitated by calling out the words the contestants had to spell, as Ginger Jones and Avalon Puente checked word spelling. Gopher told the children they must pronounce the letters in each word in the Creek way, which differs from the sounds made by the letters in the English alphabet.

Most of the words used in the Spelling Bee, such as nakhotce (paper) and comottet (jump), were more than two syllable words, with some up to four syllables in length. According to Gopher, the spellers had the most difficulty words having an A, AH, V or UH sound, as in the words cvpvkket (anger) and emahaya (teacher).

The contest lasted a considerable amount time, showing the students’ preparedness, before it all came down to Brooke Osceola, 11, and Jaden Puente, 9. In the end, Osceola emerged victorious, spelling the enkalafet (peeling with a knife), and claimed the silver bumble bee-shaped trophy. All eight contestants received a certificate for their participation in the spelling bee.

“The first-ever Creek spelling bee was exciting and challenging with the students and teachers,” said Gopher. “We teach them to learn how to say words, sentences and then learn to write in our language.”