Public policy wasn’t a term that exactly rolled off 16-year-old Ev Wellmon’s tongue. With her extracurricular activities focused on advocacy, she was, of course, aware of policies impacting the public. But, as a field of study, it wasn’t top of mind.

A summer program at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, however, changed that. The weeklong Policy Leadership Advocacy by Youth, or PLAY, Program in July introduced nearly 50 high school students from Charlottesville and the surrounding areas to the world of public policy and leadership.

The program took place in partnership with nonprofit iThrive Games, which was founded by Dorothy Batten (Darden ’90), daughter of Frank Batten, who founded the Batten School, and with funding from the Jefferson Trust, making PLAY entirely free for participants.

By the end of the week, Wellmon, a Charlottesville High School junior where she is president of Young Feminists, had a possible career to pursue one day after hearing from a speaker who works in education policy. “I didn’t really know things like that existed,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool. Maybe education policy would be awesome and achievable for me.’”

Doors Opened

Through conversations about issues impacting them now, PLAY’s organizers set out to provide participants with leadership skills, introduce them to public policy and, eventually, build a pipeline of future policy and leadership studies students.

“Even for adults, when you think about public policy, it’s such a broad topic,” said Shawn Anderson, Batten’s assistant director of student services. “We really wanted to look at what issues they were facing in their lives as high school students and, especially over the last two and a half years … of COVID and what are some policy issues that they identified as being tough or challenging for them in their high school careers and social lives.”

Students toured Grounds for a glimpse of college life and took part in sessions about public speaking and developing professional networks. “There was just a whole bunch of open doors to this program that now I get to explore and maybe figure out what path I want to take and what I need to do next,” said Mushtaq Faiz, a 16-year-old junior at William Monroe High School in Greene County.

A large chunk of the week used game design, with guidance from iThrive, to foster conversations about policy issues that touch today’s teens, including mental health, gun access, women’s issues and income inequality.

Play On

Letting teens dig into big questions in the space of a game creates opportunities for them to reflect on their own knowledge and experience, said Susan Rivers, iThrive’s executive director and chief scientist. “The power of game design is it invites you to be super concrete about your understanding of the world.”

And teens are in a unique place in their own development to come up with out-of-the-box ideas, Rivers said. While adults have learned how systems operate and usually work within those confines to solve problems, the teen brain is fine-tuned to explore every possibility as they figure out their place in the world, away from parents.

“Their natural inclination is to take risks,” Rivers said. “And, for me and for the work that we do, they make some of the ideal design partners for coming up with solutions to address the world’s problems.”

College Ready

Wellmon’s group focused on surging mental health problems in teens, and their discussions included conversations about solutions such as more school counselors and training for teachers to help students.

They wanted their game to leave players feeling exactly how teens feel as they grapple with a lack of mental health support — frustrated and demoralized, Wellmon said. To play the game, players picked up cards that had them move forward or backward based on positive or negative experiences. Deleting social media moved them ahead, for example, but a fight with parents set them back.

“It was truly miserable to play,” Wellmon said. “You couldn’t tell anyone what happened to you. You could draw a card and go back five spaces, and you weren’t allowed to talk to anyone because we want to show how isolating it can be, feeling like you have no one to talk to.”

Wellmon called the entire experience “enriching.” Faiz said it was “thought provoking.” He especially enjoyed interacting with current Batten students, who served as counselors. "I wanted to just go straight ahead to college,” he said.

Anderson said, pending funding, organizers would love to hold PLAY again. “I can’t emphasize enough how well these high school students presented themselves, their professionalism and their ability to be vulnerable and really put themselves out there. They did this all while practicing exactly what the Batten School is,” he said, “and that’s public policy and leadership.”