Thursday and Friday I was able to attend the annual CASP (California Association of School Psychologists) Conference in Costa Mesa, California. Having gone to the national (NASP) conference last year in San Francisco I was very excited to be able to hear what California specifically is talking about.
Only one other student from my cohort attended with me and only one other student from the entire school attended in addition to the two of us. The presentations were interesting and the main focus this year was on mental health and behavior. When we first got there we were really nervous that we wouldn't be able to "keep up" with lingo and topics covered by people who had been in the field longer than us. To our surprise we were every bit able to keep up and even offer what our own districts were doing when people had questions. What I really liked about CASP was that so many people were able to connect and converse about issues. When we went to NASP it was a lot more about just listening and not really voicing your own ideas and thoughts.
My favorite part of CASP was a practitioner student luncheon that was put on. This was an opportunity for students to sit at small round tables with practitioners and ask questions or discuss anything that they were curious about. Originally I thought this would be a great opportunity to pass out my resume' and be potentially hired... unfortunately that didn't happen. Most people we talked to weren't hiring at all! (NOT GOOD NEWS!) We did get a chance to meet the NASP president and talk to people from northern counties like Sonoma, and southern counties like Palm Springs and San Deigo. I was pretty disappointed that we didn't see or hear about ANYONE from central California!
Overall, I think we both learned a lot about pressing issues and were very happy to see that the main focus of most topics was behavior and BCBA, which we both have a lot of experience with! Not to mention, holding the conference in beautiful Costa Mesa gave us some time to enjoy Huntington Beach and other parts of Orange County!!
