As I wrote last week, after spending the later part of the campaign studiously avoiding most policy discussions, Michelle Obama appears to be easing her way back into the game. She has been visiting federal agencies, speaking to thousands of thrilled bureaucrats and discussing how her husband’s stimulus package would enable each agency to offer new programs. At the Department of Education on Monday, Michelle spoke about the stimulus bill’s $150 billion for early child care, school districts, colleges, and Pell grants. Yesterday she addressed 1,000 people at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she spoke about affordable housing and home ownership.

It’s great to see this. What a fiction that getting the girls adjusted to life in D.C. — especially with the assistance of her mother and dozens of household staff — would ever have been a “full time job” for Michelle. When the Obamas visited Capital City Charter School on Tuesday, Michelle even poked fun at the silly conventions of the first lady role, telling a second grade girl who said she wanted to be first lady when she grew up, “It doesn’t pay much.” And indeed, it must be strange for Michelle, after a lifetime as an independent earner, to be pulling no salary at all as she works with her husband’s administration to run the country.

Politico‘s Nia-Malika Henderson has more on Michelle Obama’s new duties.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.