[Ohio-talk] Fwd: How One FSU Grad Student Intern with AFB's Policy Center is Helping Change the World!

Wed May 30 17:41:17 UTC 2012

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: AFB DirectConnect <MRichert at afb.net>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 12:36:54 -0400
Subject: How One FSU Grad Student Intern with AFB's Policy Center is
Helping Change the World!
To: AFB Subscriber <afbweb at afb.net>

 AFB DirectConnect Letterhead

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
How One FSU Grad Student Intern with AFB's Policy Center is Helping
Change the World!

For further information, contact:

Mark Richert, Esq.
Director, Public Policy, AFB
(202) 469-6833
MRichert at afb.net <mailto:mrichert at afb.net>

Throughout each year, the AFB Public Policy Center offers internship
opportunities to students enrolled in post-graduate programs leading to
careers in service delivery and/or advocacy for children, working-age
adults, and seniors living with vision loss, including those who may
have additional disabilities. Read the following engaging story of one
intern's brief but rewarding experience.

My Life as an AFB Policy Center Intern

by

Elizabeth Grigg
Candidate, Master of Science in Visual Disabilities
Florida State University

How much would you really expect to learn over the course of a
three-week internship? Do you think you would even be able to get past
the dreaded phone-answering, envelope-stuffing, death by a thousand
paper cuts phase? And yet, I didn’t do any of these things (at least
more than once or twice) during my three-week internship with the
American Foundation for the Blind Public Policy Center.

The Center’s internship program has a suggested length of six weeks, but
I wanted to fit it in between graduate semesters as much as possible,
hence the three-week timeframe. Before I left for DC, I could tell that
some people thought I was wasting my time because of the short amount of
time I’d have. I’ll admit that my own confidence started waning,
especially when I realized I couldn’t really articulate what the
internship duties would be when others asked me about them. So naturally
I started picturing myself buried under piles of paper in some small
office, emerging only to leave at the end of the day. But no matter, I
told myself. It would be a great experience, at the very least because
I’d be hanging around some really brainy lobbyist types - and maybe
they’d share some sordid insights into Washington politics with me.

The first indication that my low expectations were somewhat off the mark
was an email I received the Friday before my start date: the AFB office
was going to the White House for a Champions of Change event, and we
interns (Kathryn D Botsford and I) would be joining the group. Naturally
I posted this exciting news on Facebook at the earliest possible
opportunity. There were some great panel discussions at the event, led
by people with various disabilities who were being honored for their
achievements and work in the STEM fields (that’s science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics). STEM was the first of MANY acronyms that
I heard over the course of this internship. In fact, there should
probably be an intern acronym manual.

The next day was the only real “grunt work” intern day – we had a stack
of nearly a thousand petition cards that people from all across the
country had signed in support of making prescription drug labels
accessible to those who are visually impaired. Our task was to deliver
these petitions to key House members along with a summary of language
that would support this kind of effort. Kathryn and I prepared oral
presentations to tell the staffers in the offices about this proposed
amendment and finished the day knowing that at least two Representatives
committed to support the language as it makes its way through the House
legislative process. We even met two live Representatives:Edolphus
Townes of New York and John Dingell of Michigan. In fact, as of this
writing, we heard that the language of our amendment has just passed on
the other side of the Hill in the Senate. Apparently hard work really
does pay off!

That same week, Kathryn and I began to assist with a massive effort to
help write and edit supporting documentation for the Anne Sullivan Macy
Act, legislation that our field is beginning to rally around that will
improve educational services and results for all students who are blind
or visually impaired. After getting over our initial panic and learning
about exactly what an “elevator speech,” “policy brief,” and “one-pager”
actually involved, we quickly got into the groove of writing, editing,
rewriting, and editing yet again. By the end of the third week we had
finished writing and massaging more than 60 pages of summaries, letters,
website content, and “pitches” that will be used to support the passage
of the Anne Sullivan Macy Act. To help introduce the legislation to
Congress, we joined Mark Richert, AFB’s Director of Public Policy, at
meetings in Senator John Kerry’s and Senator Patricia Murray’s offices.
We provided staffers with handouts we prepared ourselves summarizing the
Macy Act, and we described how the Act would have a practical impact on
real students' lives. To me, the most enlightening aspect of these
meetings was watching an expert like Mark play the political and policy
wonk game with staffers who were very skilled at both deflecting and
dishing out hard questions.

Another event that Kathryn and I helped out with was a photo exhibit
presented by the Council of Schools for the Blind at the Rayburn House
Office Building. The pictures showed students participating in a variety
of Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) activities, and the exhibit’s purpose
was to educate visitors about the importance of the ECC for students
with visual impairments. We were happy to see staffers and
representatives visit the exhibit, and I was also grateful for the
opportunity to get to know some influential people in the field of
visual impairments who came out to support this effort and who were kind
enough to spend some one-on-one time during the Hill event with me: Lou
Tutt, the Executive Director of AER; Mitch Pomerantz, President of the
American Council of the Blind; Charles Young, President of the Hadley
School for the Blind; Dan Wenzel, the new Youth Services manager for the
Blind Industries and Services of Maryland; and Dr. Eugene McMahon,
Executive Director of the Council of Schools for the Blind.

This probably seems like a lot for three weeks, but that wasn’t even all
of it. Kathryn, Mark, and I also attended Consortium for Citizens with
Disabilities (CCD) task force meetings that addressed education and
technology for people with disabilities. These coalition meetings
provided some insight into how the lobbying and policy-making processes
work, namely slowly and painfully, and with a lot of legwork and
collaboration.

Kathryn and I even went to some events on our own representing AFB; we
attended a US Department of Education “Race to the Top Assessment” team
meeting titled: Lesson Learned on Improving Assessment Accessibility for
Students With Disabilities. Panel members at this meeting gave some
examples of how test items could be made accessible for students with
disabilities, but we were disappointed that the needs of students who
are visually impaired or blind were not really addressed. All the more
reason for people like us to be there and get involved!

The last major event of my internship was going to a meeting with Dr.
Melody Musgrove, the Director of the Office of Special Education
Programs. Mark, Paul Schroder (AFB’s Vice President, Programs and Policy
Group), Kathryn, and I were there. Our goal was to acquaint Dr. Musgrove
with the policy objectives of the Anne Sullivan Macy Act, to advocate
for updating the Education Department’s policy guidance for parents and
educators of students with vision loss, to discuss the need that
students have for braille instruction and appropriate low vision
devices, and to get a report from Dr. Musgrove on the status of the
office’s monitoring program. This was another one of those great
experiences where I was more or less able to be a fly on the wall. What
was said really highlighted my biggest take-away from this entire
perspective-changing experience--

In order to see the changes that we stakeholders want, we need to
communicate with each other and develop consensus, foster relationships
with those in our field in DC who can keep us up-to-date on policy, and
get our changes in at the beginning of the process. I think most people
in the field of visual impairments know how much we tend to play
catch-up, and how much easier it would be if problems like digital
textbook accessibility and other challenges were addressed from the
get-go. As a busy teacher in the field, it will be easy for me to feel
removed from public policy and unaware of how it affects my day-to-day
work. And yet, there are many people working behind the scenes to
improve things and make changes, whether I, the teacher on the front
line, take the time to provide any input or not.

Participating in this internship taught me how important it is to speak
up and get involved, and hopefully my experience motivates you to do
this as well. Or, you could just participate in this internship yourself
and have your own perspective-changing experience.

Liz

PS: Want more information about some of the things we attended or worked
on? Check out the following websites:

Champions of Change event:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/champions/STEM-equality-for-Americans-with-dis
abilities

Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities:

http://c-c-d.org/

US Department of Education Race to the Top Assessment Program:

http://www.ed.gov/category/program/race-top-assessment-program

Council of Schools for the Blind:

http://www.cosb1.org/home

Prescription drug label accessibility:

http://www.help.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=e1bfeed3-75b8-4945
-81bd-af83bdaec2d3&groups=Chair
<http://www.help.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=e1bfeed3-75b8-494
5-81bd-af83bdaec2d3&groups=Chair>

Anne Sullivan Macy Act:

http://www.afb.org/MacyAct

Expanded Core Curriculum:

http://www.afb.org/ECC

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Cordially,

Nimer Jaber

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