Say the word: Laurie Ocampo takes the reins as official pronouncer for the state spelling bee

Laurie Ocampo knows how important a spelling bee is to shaping a child’s education.

As an educator for more than 20 years, Ocampo has held many positions throughout the education system.

Currently, the administrator at Parkview Elementary School in Socorro, Ocampo is back where she belongs.

“I thought I was retiring and moved back from Arizona to be closer to my family,” she says. “They talked me into leading Parkview and I couldn’t love it more.”

Say the word: Laurie Ocampo takes the reins as official pronouncer for the state spelling bee

Ocampo has also spent a good part of her career as a pronouncer for the spelling bee. This year, she will be the official pronouncer for the New Mexico State Spelling Bee.

The pronouncer at spelling bees does much more than simply speak the words out loud.

He or she provides all the information a speller can receive about that special word in the moment: its origin, its grammatical part of speech, and an example or two of its use in a sentence.

Ocampo is the pronouncer in Socorro and she’s been back in the area since 2019.

At Parkview Elementary School, she oversees about 400 students and works with her staff to make education fun.

“We just had our declamation and that’s where kids memorize poetry or prose,” she says. “They get up and deliver to an audience. It’s not quite a spelling bee but it’s a teaching moment where kids can overcome their public speaking fears.”

Being part of the spelling bee universe is a big deal, Ocampo says.

She describes being a pronouncer as a science.

“I go very carefully,” she says. “If I see a word that I feel like I would butcher, we have the authority to omit the word. I want to make sure that I will pronounce it correctly. There’s a lot of pressure to get it pronounced right because it is a competition.”

Ocampo says parents have the right to appeal if they feel the word is mispronounced.

When she gets ready for a spelling bee, she spends hours preparing beforehand.

“It’s a lot harder than what people think,” she says. “You have words that are homonyms, and I have to be able to say that the word is one. Then I have to give them the part of speech and then a definition.”