Alumni of the Master of Education in Education Policy talk about how the program’s internship opportunities gave them the chance to apply their classroom learning in diverse settings and make a real-world impact on education issues. Visit their website to learn more: http://www.educationpolicy.uw.edu

Video Transcript:

[Jillian]
I think that a sign of a great program is when you come in and then you leave just being a completely changed person in the way you look at policy, in the way you look at the world, in the way you look at the students and the people that you want to help and serve. And I think that MEP did a great job in evolving my mindset.

[Alan]
We had students from as far as South Korea and Portugal. So I was able to learn about education in other places, and people from all over the United States who brought different perspectives on the ways of viewing education into our cohort.

[Jessica]
The first half of the program is definitely more classroom based. I mean, there's still opportunities where you're going out in the field, but for the most part, you're in the classroom learning, having discussions, writing papers, doing the kind of more heavily focused in theory work. And then the second half of the program is when you're kind of let loose, and you go start your internship.

[Sarah]
It's perfect timing because you've just gotten a taste of what policy is and how to evaluate policy, how the different lens you can think through it, and then you start to apply it right away.

[Alan]
I was an intern for the policy advising team to King County Executive Dow Constantine, and we were working on, and had been working on, an ongoing initiative to improve the state of kindergarten readiness in King County.

[Jessica]
So I was at North Seattle Community College. It's a building called the Opportunity Center for Employment and Education, and it was actually a legislative bill that was created by a lawmaker in the 43rd district, and he had this vision of combining education with employment and social services all in one building, a one-stop shop, if you will.

[Jillian]
I interned at the College Success Foundation, and I essentially worked with the research and evaluation team at CSF. And I basically had the task of looking at how to define college readiness and college of a good fit.

[Sarah]
I was positioned in City Council to actually watch how City Council interacts with the City's Office for Education and how they're handling the school levy and how does that impact the community members, the school district and the governance of City Council.

[Jillian]
I absolutely felt a part of the team. I think the two mentors that I had in the program, they did a phenomenal job making sure that I was on track, first of all with the project, but also that I understood the mission and the purpose of CSF.

[Alan]
Through my work at King County, I was able to constantly apply what I was learning in class to things that were actually making a difference.

[Sarah]
I mean there's only so much you can learn from the book and then to actually watch how it unfolds and to see the challenges and hiccups along the way and how can we in real time, in real language, how can we respond to that and still meet the goals that we hope to.

[Jessica]
I got exposed to having those conversations with lawmakers, learning how to navigate that language and understand how things get done, and I draw upon what I learned in my internship to do the work I'm doing now.

[Sarah]
I'm the director of policy for Teachers United, and we are a, now in our third year nonprofit and we work to bridge that gap and really build capacity of teachers to engage in policy.

[Jessica]
Everybody was in this high-intensity one-year program and now dispersed back into the community. And we just met a couple weeks ago and people were all over. There's some in K-12, there's some who've gone to the East Coast or working in nonprofit. Everybody is doing something that they care about and having a direct impact on the ground.

[Jillian]
We're all future leaders, and to be able to have that network and be connected to a larger thing is absolutely amazing.