CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — When current Charlottesville Middle School student Justine Puri first made it to a school-wide spelling bee last year, the then-sixth grader at Walker Upper Elementary told Cville Right Now they didn’t do very well.
But that first experience provided them with motivation to study even harder, and this year, Puri not only won CMS’s schoolwide spelling bee, but emerged victorious in the division wide as well, and will now compete at the Scripps National Spelling Bee regional competition in Richmond on March 4.
Dorothy Carney, the gifted resource teacher at CMS, is in charge of facilitating the competition at the school, which begins each year with spelling bees in each of the English classes. The top two finishers from each class then move onto the schoolwide bee, which saw Puri face off against 40 other students in November…