Season 2 Episode 10: Meet BioBuilder Jo-Anne Purdy

Jo has been a biology teacher for 26 years and a BioBuilder from the very start, having attended the very first Professional Development workshop at MIT in 2011. Since then, she has integrated BioBuilder into her classroom (Newton North and Westborough High Schools in MA), supporting a BioBuilderClub that was led by Viggy (Season 1 Episode 6), and leading teacher professional development workshops. In this conversation she digs into what it takes to run BioBuilder labs and programs, as well as how evolution of the field has made the content easier to teach and more relevant to everyone.  

Over the past decade, she has found that teaching BioBuilder to students and teachers has gotten easier thanks to the success of the field. She regularly teaches how synthetic biology enables the production of Vanillin from yeast rather than plants and how Ginkgo Bioworks can resurrect the scent of an extinct flower.  These examples, as well as how students rely on "their best friends: Google, Siri, and Alexa," have made teaching BioBuilder easier and easier. She also recalls how the first BioBuilder workshop required 5 days of in person learning, and how it transitioned to 3 days of in person learning, and how now - post COVID - BioBuilder teachers are trained in a hybrid model of synchronous and asynchronous learning to reach educators everywhere. 

The very last minute of the interview includes Jo's heartfelt description of the impact BioBuilder has had on her own career.

Learn more about BioBuilder's programs for students, educators, and industry professionals here 👉 https://biobuilder.org/

And follow BioBuilder on social media:
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https://twitter.com/SystemsSally
https://www.youtube.com/@BioBuilder
https://www.instagram.com/systems_sally/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/16132078

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Life Changing Science, the Bible podcast. I'm your host, z Sean. And joining me today is the expert biology teacher, Joanne Purdy. Joanne has been teaching for the past 26 years and is currently at Westboro High School in Westboro Massa. She sets where she was integral in bringing in over$40,000 in grant money to update the biotech equipment of the high school. Joanne has been with Bible from the very start. She's been involved with integrating Bible labs into schools, as well as building the professional development workshops for teachers. I am very excited to speak to Joanne today. So let's dive right into this episode.

Speaker 2: 0:41

I'm always keen to hear stories about the early days of Bio Builder, so I wanted to ask you about the first Bible, the workshop back in 2011. How did you hear about it? How did you get involved? Uh, and and what was it like? Cuz this is of course, um, 11, 12 years ago.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Yeah. So I used to teach at Newton North High School and there was a, um, a really innovative teacher there named Steve Chinos. And he, he was close with Natalie Kde, who's the founder of Bodybuilder Now, and he approached myself and a few other of the, uh, AP biology teachers and said, Guess what? My friend is doing this great wonderful thing and they'll pay you for it. Are you interested? And the three of us, you know, this was gonna like partway through the school year and we're like, What are you talking about? Like, what's synthetic biology? We don't even know<laugh>. And so it just, it just kind of worked out that the three of us said, Okay, we'll do this together. We'll give it a go even though it's five days, we actually all have this week free and we're gonna get a few dollars for it. We'll just give it a go. What, you know, what harm could it be? And it took me a couple of days to buy in. Like at first I, and I watched, uh, and Natalie was spectacular. She sent us some videos in advance, um, some that I have now recommended to other people. And she sent some videos in advance and I'm listening to the videos and I'm watching the videos and I watched a couple of them a couple of times and, you know, I'm a biology person, my master's degree is in biology. And I was like, I kind of get it, but we'll see. All right, we're just gonna go, I'm gonna be with my colleagues. It's gonna be fun no matter what. They're gonna give us lunch, we'll just go and see what happens. Right. And, and as experienced teachers, we've been to lots of workshops and lots of platforms and lots of try this out and tons and, you know, tons of professional workshops. So, okay, this will be another one, we'll just give it a go. And it took us, it took me a couple of days to really buy in and really understand and buy in is probably the wrong word, but it took us a, it took me a couple of days to really understand what they were getting at, but then by probably day part way through day three and definitely into to day four of the workshops, I could see how this could be applicable to my classroom. I could see how I could use this lab instead of one of some of the ones that I had been doing because this one is so much better and this one has more depth, has more levels of understanding, and I'm gonna do this one now instead of the other ones. And so that was spectacular. And then the following year I went back for the master class and I remember when Natalie said, So now after you've taken the master class in year two, you could, you could run these workshops. And I was like, I don't know if I could run this workshop, but, but myself And um, ano another colleague at the time said, You know what? We're gonna teach some of the other teachers in my department that, that didn't go to the workshops. And we did it. And it was a, it was spectacular and we were, and it was really nice to have collegiality and my, you know, other colleagues of mine, we did it together. We could set up labs together, We could. And so that part was, was certainly quite nice. But my, the thing that sells it is that the students love them. The students love the labs, they, and the evolution of all of this, cuz now it's been 10 years now, you know, at first this felt a little pie in the sky at first, but not anymore at all. Now this is an everyday thing. I mean, this is what made our covid vaccines right. This is now an, an every day has touched every human being pretty much on the planet. And so in the early days it took, it took a while to really embrace it all, but now it's at people's doorsteps. And I get better too. The, you know, the more labs I do, the more students I involve, I now have high school students that are thinking about synthetic biology, long term, several that are college students right now. So it's like a tree that grows with lots of branches.

Speaker 2: 5:05

I, uh, completely agree. I think there's not a soul in the world that doesn't know what, uh, Mr. And A is, um,<laugh> regardless of which industry you're in. Um, when you went for the, the first workshop, you mentioned that it, you're maybe a bit hesitant and it took you a while to embrace it or was it just that cuz you know, still biology at the end of the day, but what aspect do you think of, uh, of synthetic biology of that workshop was so different? Was it just the approach to the biology was, was really different?

Speaker 3: 5:38

Um, so it was, Natalie gave a lot of examples and I was, and they were non biology examples. And so I think I was, I think that she was getting into some of the details of how synthetic biology, about how synthetic DNA is constructed and how synthetic biology works. And I think I wasn't ready for that part yet. I remember like a good example about, um, and I've seen her use this example again. And I think one, one of the ones that comes to mind is about train and some train tracks and essentially having to make train tracks universal so that all trains could travel on them. Right. Makes sense. Um, and I think, like I got a lot of those examples at the beginning and there was one about, um, cans that store oil and there were other examples and I was like, where is this all going? Like, I'm kind of confused about all of this. I think I wasn't clear at the beginning. I mean, and I'm sure Natalie was very, very clear. I think I just didn't get it at in the moment. And I think, and I'm trying to, again, it was a long time ago. And I think, and I think sh there were, there were other parts to it, things that I didn't concern me, but I could see how they would concern other people. And there were, we, we spent a lot of time on that things about, um, the bioethics of it all. Like that didn't concern me at all, but there was a big chunk about bioethics and I was like, I don't, like, why are we even going here? And, and we spent a lot of time on that and we, and it makes, it makes perfect sense now, you know, and if a student asked you a question from an ethical perspective, like why should we be doing this 10 years ago, I could see where you would really need to spend some time on that. But today, right at Major Covid vaccine, do you wanna know about the bioethics of that or not? Probably not. You're happy you got your vaccine<laugh> and so I think, yeah, I think at the beginning there was, there was so much. And I think especially as an educator, you know, teaching, you know, 16, 17 and 18 year olds, I've really had, you know, cause I only get so much time with them, I've really had to focus in on like what's essential and then so that we can move forward and we can do the thing. And then once we do the thing, then people are more like, okay, now I understand. It takes a while I think, to build up to this one.

Speaker 2: 7:59

What would you say are the major changes from like the most recent bible, the workshop you've run at Westboro High School compared to the first one you ran? Um, back in 2012?

Speaker 3: 8:10

So you're asking about, um, workshops where I teach teachers or workshops where I teach students

Speaker 2: 8:15

Workshops where you teach students.

Speaker 3: 8:16

Okay. So, so labs for, I guess labs for students, workshops for teachers. If I remember some of the first times running these labs when I was teaching at, uh, uh, Newton North High School, it, it took me and I, and I was teaching all AP biology, so I had to go fast, right? Which is not good, right? I didn't have all of the spectacular examples of synthetic biology when I first started teaching. Like I didn't have the great examples about vanilla and vanilla. Um, I didn't have examples of things like the Covid vaccine, right? So it was so new that I personally didn't have and, and probably the whole world didn't have enough great examples of the applications of synthetic biology. So it was hard to wrap your brain around. And now 10 years later, the examples abound. So it's easy to relate to students with all of the great examples, you know, vanilla versus, you know, vanilla versus does it make a difference to you whether your vanilla is made by a yeast or whether your vanilla is made by an orchid in Madagascar where they had to hack down the rainforests in order to get to it. And this is where a lot of students start to say things like, you know what, it really doesn't make a difference to me where my vanilla comes from vanilla's vanilla. Does it matter if a yeast makes it or does it matter if an orchid makes it? I don't care. It's, you know. And so when I start to give those kinds of examples or the example, um, from Ginko Bioworks with the extinct hibiscus, and they were able to isolate the genes for smell from this particular flower, and they were able to use those genes to, uh, I think they make the proteins again so that you can smell the smell of an extinct flower. And now there's the example of, um, you know, other companies using synthetic biology to make useful products. And so now we have all of these great examples, and that's usually when I teach students now, that's how I start where I didn't have that 10 years ago. So when I start with that, that gets students that perks up people's ears and turns people's brains on like, okay. And they, and I think about this with my own students a lot too. 10, 10 years, 10 years ago compared to now, these students live in a completely different world. And when I was a college student and I was, I just, we just had our open house for, um, school and I hold up the biology textbook that we use and that was the same textbook that I used in college, different edition. It was a little thinner when I was a college student, but, but same textbook. And that's how we learned. We learned from a textbook, you know, I was a college student, you had a textbook, you had lectures, and that was it. There was no internet, there was no canvas, there was no blackboard, there were no video clips, there was none of that. And today, students learn very differently. They learn by video clips, they learn, you know, Google, Siri and Alexa are three of their best friends and they learn so differently. So when I can bring examples, little video clips, all of these little pieces, it it just brings the whole learning experience kind of full circle for them, I think. So now when I teach it, I give all these great examples to begin. I give them, then I give them the science of the synthetic biology piece, and then we can run the labs and then we wrap it all up together. And then I tell, and I ran a Bilder club for a little while, for a couple of years, Um, VI actually started it. And because he said, Mrs. Purdy, we can do this. I know we can do this. I'm like, Okay, vi you sure. It's like, I'm positive, okay,<laugh>. And, and if they want a little bit more, they can learn how to use programs like Benchling and which is, and I had some high school students do that. And so now that there's more out there now that makes more sense to students, whereas 10 years ago it was just in those really infantile stages, but now it's so much more involved. And I think Stu I think it's easier to understand when you have more examples.

Speaker 2: 12:42

It, it's fair to say that Bible has significantly influenced, uh, your teaching career over the past decade, um,

Speaker 3: 12:49

More than anything else

Speaker 2: 12:50

You've been involved with Bio Builder from, you know, in the labs teaching students as well as, um, teaching teachers, which is I presume a whole different methodology of teaching. I'd love to hear about, about that side of things, about the workshops and how has that sort of, uh, developed, um, over the past few years teaching teachers?

Speaker 3: 13:09

I love both. And I think I still, I think teaching students is a little bit harder for me personally, just because they're young and you need to say it in a way that they're going, that they're ready to receive it. Whereas with people that are already teaching biology, you know, they have a bachelor's degree in biology, maybe they have a master's degree in biology already. So when we say DNA to rna to protein, to trait, the biology teaches are like, Yep, got that. Whereas the high school students are like, Yeah, okay, now I got that. So I think, I think initially it's harder to teach for me biology, um, like high school biology students just because there's, there's so much wrapped up in there that, I mean, so they're learning it all at the same time. They're learning the, the, the core science plus some synthetic biology plus the lab technique. Like how do you pipe it, right? What is, you know, how do you inoculate a plate? How do you pipe it? So that's involved. Whereas when I teach teachers, most of them can already pipe it. And when most of them know this is the bottom of the Petri dish and this is the top of a Petri dish, you know, so very, you know, you know, people that are teaching high school already have some science foundation and they have some basic lab foundation, whereas high school students don't have that yet. So, so I think it's a little harder initially to teach the high, to teach high school students. Uh, and, but the next part of it, how do you help high school teachers? How do you help them incorporate this into their yearly curriculum? That's harder. How can you, how can you do this? And this, and this is one thing that I think comes up a lot is pe many teachers who I don't have time and I don't have time, but you do if, and you teach through the lab, like all of the things that you would normally teach from a scientific perspective, you know, when you teach about things like experimental design and you teach about things like independent variables and dependent variables and building graphs, just use the lab, use the lab to do all of those things. You don't have to come up with all of these examples about graphing and variables and controlled experiments and positive control and negative control. You don't have to come up with all the, those like, kind of, um, examples on the fringe. Just use the lab to do all of it. And that takes a little while. But once people buy in, you buy in and it make, and it's so much more authentic when they, when teachers and students have an example that's at their fingertips that's being used in the, the outside world pretty consistently. And I, I think that that makes a difference. So to, to really answer your question initially, putting it all together in the lab is more, I think, a little bit more challenging for high school students where the lab work for the teachers is less challenging, but h helping high school teachers incorporate that, it, it's, it's not hard to do, but it's hard to reach the point where like, okay, we are ready to give this a go. Not for everyone cuz some high school teachers, um, you know, our mock two with their hair on fire and wanna try everything. But some high school teachers are more reserved, completely, understandably, like are a little bit more reserved, you know, how am I gonna do this? And I have to, I have a curriculum to complete, you know, my students have to take an AP exam and you know, my students have to take an M C A S test and they have to take a standards based test, like, and I ha and you know, we owe it to them to prepare them for all of those things. But if you, you can be a little bit crafty and you can use the labs and use the Bilder curriculum to get to your end goal in every way.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah. Bio builder facilitates sort of this entire learning experience about teachers and students. What for you personally, is like the biggest challenge in integrating synthetic biology in high schools over the next year? Is it more of, um, other than I guess the curriculum and working with teachers and students, is it also, I presume like just resources? Cause a lot of biotech equipment can, can get quite expensive.

Speaker 3: 17:52

It's pricey. Um, and it can be time consuming to really set those up. And thankfully I have wonderful students and I can say, Hey, if I just need help, I need three sets of hands. You know, if anybody's got 15 minutes after school today, I need three sets of hands that can just, you know, label centrifuge tubes for me, can, can I need three sets of hands so we can inoculate some plates and like I'll direct you. And they are just wonderful. And I find that incredibly helpful. Um, I also, thankfully too, I also have had interns every year and my interns can help me and almost always, interns are former students, so they've done the labs, you know, I can say to an intern, Okay, can you label all of the, can you label these 100 tubes this, remember this part of Oh yeah, I remember the, okay, can you label that? So, and I, and I often say, So remember when you did this lab and remember where all this stuff was all labeled for you? Guess what, that didn't happen accidentally. Somebody like you did that so<laugh>, so now's your chance.<laugh> given it back<laugh>. Um, so yeah, it can be, it can be time consuming. And you know, I have 125 students and I teach five different classes. I have four sections of AP biology and one section of honors biology, which is a lot. It's demanding. So, and, and the other thing that's challenging is the timing of it all. You know, when you, when you order some of the bits and pieces, you have to use some of them right away. And when you put, you know, your plasmids in the refrigerator, and this has happened to me, you put your plasmids in the refrigerator and then the power goes out, Uhoh. Now what? So I've reached the point very much where I bring, like I bring the plasmas home with me. I'm not leaving'em in the refrigerator there just in case, you know, I bring things home because I wanna be sure my refrigerator's not gonna blink off. And it always works out. Like there's always like a storm coming. I'm like, Oh my gosh, we're gonna lose electricity. I'm like, we gotta set up the generator just in case. And so it's, there's a lot of, of things that all have to happen in the right order and you have to be prepared for that. And I can understand, especially if you're an early career teacher and you have a lot of other obligations, I can understand why, why this would be complicated. However, one of the things that we do at Bio Builder is that, um, people that are willing to give these a go, um, you get a mentor, which is huge, right? Do you get an experienced teacher that's done this for a long time? Like somebody like me, let me walk you through this<laugh>, let's do like, let's, let's do step by step, you know, let's do our little meet after school on a screen and I'll walk you through it and we've, we make videos. I've made a bunch of videos of myself setting up labs. This is how you set the lab up. And so I think we've done as much as we can. Um, and there's always more to do, but we've done a lot of things to help early career teachers or people that are just trying this out to be successful.

Speaker 2: 21:08

Uh, I, I keep mentioning the, like the Bible, the curriculum is so revolutionary and it's, it's a great educational tool to like teach synthetic biology to anyone really who's interested. But I think the real, uh, magic by Bible is the community is the Bible. The community is mm-hmm<affirmative>, everyone who's involved is the people. And that's I think what really sets, I guess Bible apart from everyone else. I, I was recently reading, I think it was a week or two ago where I, there was a McGraw Hill study done that said, uh, four and five college students. Um, I, I dunno if it was, but just four and five students at high school and college level use YouTube and TikTok, I I guess to study mm-hmm<affirmative> and I'm, I'm always interested in learning about like there's even hashtag study talk, um,<laugh>,

Speaker 3: 21:57

There's so many. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yeah. And I was like, I, I'd love to hear more about how, because I think every lab in the world over the past two years now has had that experience of, you know, having to record experiments online, uh, record it and put up, put it up online. And we're getting a lot more integrated with technology. And I think sometimes when it comes to the biochemistry, when it comes to a synthetic biology lab itself, it's really difficult to do anything remotely. Um, but you do have like synthetic biology kits, um, and like videos that you can watch online. I'd love to hear more about how, I guess this is, I guess it, it's all a process, but how is more, I guess, technology being used, um, in viable workshops and labs?

Speaker 3: 22:42

Yeah. Yeah. So when I first jumped on to Bilder 11 years ago now, it was, you went five days and it was all in person and you sat there for five days and it was lecture and it was lab and it was connection and it was both and it was five days. And then, um, and then the reality was that that's really hard for teachers to do and, and many teachers want to do that, but committing for five days for a whole week in the summer can be really hard, especially if you're challenging be to, um, in terms of geography. Cuz they all met at mit. So then, um, it was cut down into three days and more teachers could attend a three day workshop than a five day workshop. So, um, it got scrunched down into three days instead of five. And then if you want a little bit more, you could come back the next year for a little bit more. And that made a lot of sense and now it's hybrid. So Natalie and I and another teacher as well have made, um, some videos and videos about opening the box. Like, okay, let's, we're gonna open the kit, like literally step by step, we're gonna open the kit together and you know, pause here while you open your kit and take these out. And here we go. We're gonna streak out the plates, we streak out our plates. All right, pause the video. You streak out your plates. And I think some people do really well with that. Um, and I think that truthfully, I think younger people are getting more used to doing things that way and like, watch the video, do this thing, you know, and, and that makes a lot of sense. Some of us old timers like me still struggle with some of those things. Like, I really want another human right next to me. Let's do this together<laugh> so you can answer all my questions right on the spot. Uh, but it has been, it has been successful so far and we still have lots of people that come in. Um, Natalie and I have traveled, um, to other places to teach teachers as well. They traveled up to Boston, then we traveled to them. So we, we find ways to, to make that work, I think. And so yeah, we, it, we've gone from five days of in person to three days of in person and now it's, it's hybrid and you can still come in if you want and, but it's, you know, some things are pre-recorded and then we have, um, some afternoons where it's just like, um, just like what kind of like what we're doing now on a screen. And so they're right there, we are right there even though we're not in the same place. So we, we have found ways to make it work. So technology improves all the way around, I suppose

Speaker 2: 25:27

I wonder if like in a year or two he'll have like VR goggles or we'll all be in the metaverse and doing stuff. I think that might be a bit too much. But<laugh>, you know, it's, it's interesting to

Speaker 3: 25:37

See my 13 year old son loves that, loves that. And when I put those things on, I feel like I am floating on mys. I'm like, this is how in the world is anybody ever gonna do this? Right? And, but I can see that. And, and even when the pandemic hit, um, we never did this, but I know that, um, some students in other schools did this. They had a device and that de and I think Natalie had tried this out too, actually. Um, it's a device that you put in the room and so when you're lecturing and talking, the device follows you around. So you as a student feel like you are there, you know, it's not the, the recording device is not static. And that one I could see if we set something up like that in the lab and you are watching and you're in your own lab, I can see how that one would work when you, cuz you would really feel like you were there. Cuz as a, as a human, you would follow that person around with your eyes. But that if we had a device like that, that, that followed us around in a lab, I think that would be helpful. The other thing, I think that is if, and if we had a device like that for somebody like me, I, I think I would reach the point where I would feel comfortable, you know what, on the days where I'm gonna teach synthetic biology in my classroom, let's set up one of those devices in my classroom and you can see what one of my whole le not lectures, but you can see what the whole class looks like for somebody that's never done this before, this is how it looks. And then that other person, whoever that, you know, maybe that teacher from the middle of, you know, Nebraska that's not gonna travel to Boston can say like, Okay, that's what that looks like in a cl actually I'm gonna write that down because Natalie might wanna do something like that. And that would be something that would be extraordinarily helpful, I think for if, you know, if you wanna watch it, that's what it looks like. And then, you know, you can sit on your Saturday morning, you know, with your cup of coffee, watch a little bit, watch a little bit more, and you could say, Yep, I could see how I could that would work for my students and my classroom. Or you would say, Nope, that's not for me.

Speaker 2: 27:51

I guess just the last question i, I have for you, um, is what would you say to any teacher or student that's interested in getting involved with, uh, Bible to, for the first time, interested in attending a workshop or, uh, joining a Bible to club or starting a bible to club, um, at their own high school?

Speaker 3: 28:12

Go into it open minded and and, and give it a go, right? I can. And I think about myself and it kind of, kind of closes the loop. I think about it myself, when I first started and I just walked in the door, right? I was with my colleagues, we walked in the door, we're doing this thing, I have this week, the next week I was going to Disney World with my family. So I'm like, okay, I'm doing this this week and then on Saturday we're gonna pass. And then, um, and I just, I wasn't, and it's funny that like, when I reflect back on it that way, I wasn't quite prepared for the impact it was going to make and how much it would revolutionize how I teach science and rejuvenate me as a science educator. And I I How would you ever know that it was gonna have that kind of impact essentially now on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, thousands at this point of students? Yeah,

Speaker 2: 29:17

Positive for

Speaker 3: 29:17

Sure. And you, you never, you never realize that going into it. So when you go into any new experience, you're like, Oh, that's a little bit interesting. Let me check that out. Like go into it with an open mind and, and just give it a go and be and be, you know, in a, a good head space of just, I'm gonna give thing a go. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, that's okay, but I'm gonna give it a chance to work.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Thanks once again to Joanne for joining me today. She gave really good insight into the evolution of education and getting people excited about biology, where 10 years ago you'd have have nothing but a 300 page textbook to Luren students. But now you have so many examples, such as the one of vanilla of us', vanilla, as well as Mercedes having their new electric vehicle interiors made for mushroom leather. This shows how much the field of synthetic biology has progressed over the past few years, and that reflects on the education level as it's easier to show students the potential of synthetic biology. I feel this episode will be very useful for teachers interested in learning more about how to integrate the bio curriculum into their labs. If you'd like to learn more about anything Joanne and I discussed today, please refer to the show notes. Join me for the next Bio builder podcast. We'll welcome another wonderful guest whose career has been influenced by buyer builders life changing science. See you next time.