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Spelling Bee Champion & Music Education Advocacy

As I was watching the last couple of minutes of the spelling bee championship tonight I couldn’t help but notice the amount of finalists who were involved in music. But even better then that was the statement of Evan O’Dorney upon winning the spelling bee:

“My favorite things to do were math and music, and with the math I really like the way the numbers fit together,”….. “And with the music I like to let out ideas by composing notes and the spelling is just a bunch of memorization.”

His statement now appears in countless newspaper articles and other media sources across the country. Thank you Evan! With many in our field constantly falling back on “music makes you smarter”, “music keeps you off the street” and other such advocacy statements and MENC’s recent survey asking educators what type of celebrity should be our spokesperson, a 13 year old spelling bee champion ends up making a spontaneous statement that goes to the heart of what so many of us are about. Perhaps we should be turning to our students more often to let the public know why music is so important in their lives!

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