| Who's
Carolyn?
 | No
stranger to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Carolyn Andrews is a "spelling
bee mom." Her son Ned, sponsored by the Knoxville News Sentinel, won the
national championship in June 1994 on his third attempt. Ned, with Carolyn as
coach, had been participating in preliminary-level spelling bees for several years.
Soon after Ned won the national championship, the Scripps National Spelling Bee
asked Carolyn to join its team as an educational consultant. Since 1998 Carolyn
has been the Scripps National Bee's word list manager.
|
| Carolyn spent
the first 22 years of her life in the southeastern corner of Virginia. The Suffolk
native earned a bachelor's degree in English from the College of William and Mary
in Williamsburg in 1976. She then joined the work force as a high-school English
teacher at a school where vocabulary and spelling were firmly established as important
aspects of the English curriculum. It was during her first year of teaching that
she first saw a copy of Words of the Champions—which was, at that
time, the official study booklet of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. |
| Soon
Carolyn and her husband, W. H. "Andy" Andrews Jr., moved to the Volunteer State,
their adopted home. In the years that followed, they had three children. Ned is
now 27, John is 25, and Gary is 19. It was also in Tennessee that Carolyn switched
careers and became a technical editor and writer, working on technical publications
associated with research and development. |
| After Carolyn
was asked to author Carolyn's Corner, she decided to unearth some files from her
teaching days. "I pulled out that 1977 Words of the Champions booklet,
and the strangest feeling overcame me. In 1977 I would never have dreamed that
one day I would be the mother of a Scripps National Spelling Bee champion—and
that I would be helping students prepare in this way for spelling bee participation." |
| Carolyn
hopes that you will enjoy as well as learn from the information presented in Carolyn's
Corner. She welcomes ideas you might like to share with other spellers. |
|
