Short vowel sounds

With all humility I must clarify first, that I am a college graduate… from a great University, (certainly the greatest University in California).  All that to say, I have attained some degree of learning, so I should be clearly qualified to help/aid/assist elementary age children with a bit of reading and the occasional math problem.

I showed up for my substitute position to the learning center at the local elementary school.  I had 15 minutes to look over a complete days work written in teacher ‘short-hand’ that I could barely decipher.  Not too worry, however, the head teacher was there to help me.  She came over and muttered something kindly about working on the short vowel sounds.  Like a good adult I nodded my head and made sure my face still had an intelligent look, while inside I was saying….what…(bad British word)!  I haven’t thought about a short vowel sound in about 45 years!  I quickly scoured around for a cheat sheet, which thankfully did not take long as this was a center for learning and there were laminated cheat sheets/instructional aids everywhere.  I quickly did a cram review on the glorious short vowel sounds and was nearly up to speed with the 7 year olds.

I managed to get through the day without setting back too many students, learned not to believe the older kids when they said, “Oh, we don’t have to do that”, and only let one kid go early which I learned you are not actually suppose to do, especially at the end of the day, but boy you should see how that head teacher can run after a pre-released kid!

Thank goodness for Jubal, as I needed to do a bit of tractor work when I got home, just to recover from my work day.

Day Two went a bit better for two reasons, I already knew where most of the cheat sheets/instructional aids were and I’d learned that unlike students, teachers are allowed to drink coffee, so trust me I did!