Tonight was the last class in my state policy practicum. It was a long, engaging evening: an invitation to my professor's house, homemade lasagna and a Corona Light, and two simulations of state Board of Education meetings.
Sure, most people could have done with just the first two.
But not in our class, and not for me. We lapped up the third part, the simulations. We role played, laughed, loved them.
This semester one of my top goals was to let my wonky side free for a few months, and see how it behaved. I enjoyed those simulations, in which my role was to advocate for early-childhood education to get a piece of the pie in the wake of an unexpected $10 million windfall in state education funding.
I enjoyed a class debate we had, again on dividing the pie: dropout prevention, or funding preschool?
I've enjoyed the internship in legislative state policy, rolling up my sleeves and digging into the trials and tribulations of English Language Learners (ELLs) in Massachusetts.
I've enjoyed attending a state board meeting and hearing impassioned advocates on both sides of a charter school rise to the mike and make their arguments.
I've enjoyed these experiences in the sense of a curiosity satisfied. In January, I wanted to glean some sense of how state policy functions, what it's like from the inside out. I now feel like I can apprehend, in some limited way, what the engine looks like: what fuels it, sparks it, oils it. Where it can go, where it can't go.
But satifsying a curiosity is different from finding joy.
I respect state policy more than ever. But I can't say I love it.
Because for all the pleasure of getting under the hood, there's been an equal if not stronger frustration with all that state policy can't do. Where the car can't drive. I've been offered the daunting privilege of contributing to a redraft of legislation that would rectify how ELLs are served by Massachusetts, 10 years after voters ended bilingual education through a ballot initiative.
The efforts to legislate in favor of ELLs is worthy. But compared to practice on the ground, or regulations from the state education association, I'm just not sure what changes in law can accomplish. Sometimes I wonder if trying to tinker from 30,000 feet is like rebuilding the house with the same fire that burned it down. It was a change in state law that led to the ELL tangle we face today; but trying to rectify that through law is a path dotted with booby-traps.
But even if we can find new language that will positively affect kids in classrooms--and I'll do my darnedest to help make that happen--the process of state-policy work hasn't given me much joy, either.
As a guest presenter in another of my classes said recently, "To work in policy, you have to like reading law." I spent most of my undergrad years reading history. The law I've read, in contrast, has often seemed drier than this New England spring. After some time reading state law and regulation, I've begun to be able to decode it. And still--after a few pages, a few minutes, I find myself pulling myself out of the papers, shaking my head, walking to the water cooler. Anything for a break before plunging back in.
There are other ways at state policy of course: state departments of education, working at the grassroots but sitting on a board or committee, doing research for a think-tank. I respect the work of state policy, and (heeding the advice of my sister) I try never to close a door.
But as I search for the next move, and consider moves beyond that, I find myself circling back to a truism I've heard before--and heard tonight from my professor: find work that resonates with you.
I've yet, I'm sorry to say, found that state policy fits the bill.
