Feature

8-year-old Fil-Am wins National Spanish Spelling Bee Championship

For one whole month and two hours a day, Kirsten Santos, an 8-year-old Filipino American girl from Richmond, Texas, studied her Spanish dictionary.
And in that one month of rigorous preparation, Kirsten was able to spell more than 60,000 words.

Kirsten’s hard work paid off when she won the National Spanish Spelling Bee Championship—a tremendous achievement especially that Spanish is not her first language.

KHIU-11 reported that there were nine spelling bee champions, but Kirsten was the youngest winner.

According to the report, Kirsten qualified for the National Spanish Spelling Bee in Denver, Colorado after winning campus bee, regional and state competitions.

She said joined the competition to challenge herself and improve her Spanish.

Santos is a third grader at the International Leadership of Texas Katy and speaks English, Spanish, and Mandarin.

At home, she speaks Filipino with her parents, Levi and Vanessa.

Santos started school a year earlier and was placed in the Gifted and Talented program.

Her parents told KHIU-11 that their daughter easily gets bored when she’s not doing anything.

The champion girl wants to become an ear surgeon, according to the report. She also aspires to study the brain because it’s “like a super computer!”

She is also dreaming of curing a disease one day.

Staff Report

The Filipino Times is the chronicler of stories for, of and by Filipinos all over the world, reaching more than 236 countries in readership. Any interesting story to share? Email us at [email protected]

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