Admittedly confused

During my undergraduate program, I learned that it is better to admit confusion than to choose to silently suffer. So this post will be my confessional for the week....I am slightly frustrated and confused by ASHA due renewal. I got an email that made it seem like renewing is a just a breeze ONLINE. The problem is the fact that my district pays our due renewals (lucky, I know), which makes the wonderful online renewal process useless. ASHA's website has 2 lines and a mailing address for people who need to mail their form in.  Nothing in the question & answer section to elaborate. Zip. Zero. This is not good for someone who's never had to renew their membership. I realize I can call or email the action center. However, I emailed our lead SLP to find out how the process works first as I didn't want to call ASHA sounding like a complete idiot. I imagine someone at ASHA will probably still get a call from me just to double check and make sure that they still send out forms with all this online registration mumbo jumbo everywhere else. So to anyone else out there going through their first due renewal---you are definitely not alone if its got you stressing. 

All venting aside, I'm happy to finally be seeing my students again. Our mass hearing screenings took two weeks to complete so this has been my first real opportunity to interact with the ones on my caseload. I've gotten tons of hugs from my 1st graders, a few shy smiles from the 3rd graders, and plenty of gasps whenever I bring them into my room for the first time. Power Rangers are apparently popular again. I guess I won't have any trouble directing their attention towards my word wall as long as I keep my figurines on it. I would love to say that everyone transitioned back to the routine well, but a few of my friends need some social story reviews. My biggest accomplishment so far has been the fact that they remembered one of my favorite rules: don't say the word game until we've finished our work. I could hear them whisper, "don't say the g- word," to each other as they came into my room. Hehehe...I'm amazed at how long losing 1-2 games last year has stuck with them. 

This week we have enjoyed playing I-Spy. This is the first year that I've tried using any I-Spy games and that's something I now regret. I love I-Spy in common. It's a great way to target categorization through play. The cards are held in boards similar to a puzzle so it's fairly well contained and they can manage them easily. It has categories that are straightforward (colors, animals, vehicles) and then more complex categories (squirming, being made of metal, etc). Students really have NO idea that they are actually working. 

 It's definitely not bad for a .50 cent thrift store find. I look forward to trying out some of my other I-spy games in the near future.