School of Public Service Blog: SPS 2014: Back to Work After the Holiday Weekend! Classes and "Ted Trips"

Talking about how to effectively get the message out

After an enjoyable three-day weekend, it's back to work for the St. Albans School of Public Service class of 2013. Today's activities included a session on "Framing, Messaging, and Working with the Media," taught by SPS (and St. Albans) faculty member Brian O'Malley, a former National Press Secretary for the Sierra Club. The session on media strategy is in the context of the group advocacy project, in which the SPS '14 students are playing the roles of an "issue advocacy" Political Action Committee ("PAC"). The Issue PACs have drafted a bill on a current policy issue and are now the process of getting "Congressional" sponsorship (with SPS faculty standing in for legislators) and, later this week, drafting press releases in support of their bill. During Week 4 of SPS the issue PACs will hold press conferences (with their classmates playing the role of reporters) and engage in a Congressional-style debate over the proposed bills.

In addition to work on the group project, SPS '14 attended Economics class with Mr. Eagles (see photos below) and Public Speaking class with Mr. Bishop. Today's Public Speaking exercise was to deliver an excerpt from a historical speech.

The day's activities will wind up with not one, but two, optional "Ted Trips"! The first group will go to an event sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center, a non-partisan policy forum, called "Whither the Palestinians." An expert panel will discuss Palestinian politics and the stalled peace process. Click HERE for more information about the Wilson Center Event, "Whither the Palestinians." Later this afternoon, another group of SPS students will visit the Atlantic Council to hear an address by the Secretary-General of NATO, the Honorable Anders Rasmussen, on the future of the NATO alliance. Click HERE for more information about the Atlantic Council event.