Where Life Sciences Meet Tech Training in High School Curriculum

Are you ready to have your mind expanded by the ingenuity of STEM education? Prepare to be inspired as Zeeshan talks with the dynamic Billy Carrier from Volunteer High School, a public school located in Church Hill, TN serving about 1000 students in grades 9-12.  There Billy is trailblazing the "BioSTEM" program. This isn't your average biology class; it's a revolutionary approach that combines the intricacies of freshman biology with career exploration through hands-on technical training. His class gives students a chance to both enhance their understanding of the living world and also get equipped with the skills that can jumpstart their careers in laboratory sciences. Billy's BioSTEM curriculum is evolving to meet educational standards without sacrificing the depth of scientific understanding and is expanding to more schools in East Tennessee. 

As if merging biology and skills-training wasn't innovative enough, Billy also gives an inside look at how BioBuilder and the STREAMWORKS Robot Drone League recently paired up to offer another novel and engaging learning experience. Picture students competing on an agricultural playing field in a challenge that combines biology, robots, and drones. 

This episode is a fusion of exploration, competition, and real-world application, all through the lens of a teacher who's at the forefront of molding the scientific minds of tomorrow.

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

And follow BioBuilder on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/BioBuilderFoundation/
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 season 4 of Life-Changing Science the Bible the Podcast. I'm your host, zeh Sean, and my guest today is Billy Carrier. Billy is an amazing teacher at Volunteer High School in Tennessee. He did his undergrad at William Mary in pre-med focusing on psychology and neuroscience, and then afterwards he realized his passion for teaching and pursued an MSc in education. In today's episode we talk about Biostem 1, a program that combines all freshman biology classes with career and technical training, and also the Robert Tronley competition that happened in Tennessee a few weeks ago. I'm really excited to talk to Billy about his Biobilder journey and the amazing and very ambitious Biostem program, so let's dive right into this episode. My first question for you is when did you hear about Biobilder? What was a fresh experience with them?

Speaker 2: 0:57

Sure well, I guess my first experience with them was about a year and a half ago.

Speaker 2: 1:03

We, in my capacity as the competitive robotics coach at our high school, biobilders, was participating in the Robot Drone League competition as part of one of the challenges that we needed to do.

Speaker 2: 1:19

So I heard about Biobilders a little bit through that. But what I actually got connected to Natalie was through NiceWonger, who sets up grants for different high school programs and college programs in our area and in our state NiceWonger Foundation and they have set up what's called the STEMLD funds. It's a grant system that in part builds these robotics teams in different high schools. So I got connected to them through that grant promoting our robotics team at our high school and through that we were able to get the robotics team started. And then, in conversations with them, got connected to Natalie, who was working with NiceWonger in various different things. And then when NiceWonger asked me to write the Biostem curriculum, natalie and our connection there brought us together in working with the Biostem curriculum and integrating some of Biobilders labs. So kind of three different connections with Biobilders through robotics, through the STEM program LD grant and through the Biostem curriculum.

Speaker 1: 2:38

I want to touch on all of those the most. I don't have too much experience with robotics, but I remember I learned how to build like an Arduino Opsicular or avoiding robot from a kid on YouTube. So that was fun. I loved it. That's the best way.

Speaker 2: 2:56

That's where you find the best information about this. Finds a little scholar on YouTube.

Speaker 1: 3:01

I saw it. Yeah, 100%. Yes. I remember Natalie had mentioned the Biostem one program and it sounded super intense and also such an incredible opportunity. At the same time, I wanted to see if you could talk to me through what that program is and how you've been developing the curriculum for that and what are some of how's the experience been so far for some of the students?

Speaker 2: 3:29

Well, first off, what it is. It's a new program that in the state of Tennessee we're piloting to put a laboratory focused science class in a CTE pathway program. Cte is Career and Technical Education, so CTE programs. I don't know if you're familiar with an idea there, but things like vocational training which show up in CTE pathways fire science, culinary, we've got electrical, industrial, mechanics. There's lots of agricultural science is another CTE pathway. So a few of those most of those have about four classes that you can move through in your high school career.

Speaker 2: 4:20

So the Biostem curriculum and pathway is really a CTE pathway. That is laboratory science focused. If you found yourself working in a laboratory as some kind of technician, this pathway is kind of preparing someone for that pathway, perhaps a pharmacy tech, perhaps someone who works in a medical laboratory, and then again you could be industrial applications, some sort of industrial floor using chemical processes, whatever laboratory processes that one might use. This is trying to set up and focus on that. There's also a focus on DNA and the use of DNA, manipulation of DNA in the synthetic biology and biotechnology sort of application. So there's a focus on that as well and those two are kind of culminating in the Biostem where Biostem two pathways that we're working on so far.

Speaker 2: 5:20

Obviously, you know a list of standards that go over all that, but in a broad sense that's sort of what the pathway is meant to do and we've floated a few different ways that it can include typical high school science kind of pathway right, and you can enter and take Biostem one as a freshman kind of follow along the path through freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year. You can take Biostem one and have it count as biology and so it counts as a, you know, necessary science that you would need to graduate from high school one of the central lab sciences. So it's a freshman level class that moves through a CTE pathway focused on laboratory sciences and hopefully resulting in well, individuals more prepared for laboratory workforce.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Thank you for, yeah, walking me through that. So they, how long is the program itself? I know students come in and in freshman year and then the bison one can be taken as biology. Would they then go on to, if they want to, AP biology and maybe form like Bible to clubs and have that all integrated as part of like their final AP bio curriculum?

Speaker 2: 6:46

Well, I'm not entirely sure about the bio builder and the AP bio curriculum, but certainly bio stem one could be a step on the way to AP bio or bio two, and I think certainly if someone was interested in the medical career, right might be in you know a step that they would want to take. Go towards AP bio. Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yes it could absolutely be a step.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Yes, they make sense and I presume you know, with the lab component labs you know in. I find bio tech labs in college very challenging. Yeah, as it's great that students are being, you know, exposed to, exposed to the lab, it's all about, you know, getting comfortable with the equipment and being in the lab. I think that's, that's a big part. What are some of the experiments and projects that students are working on? I think I think one of them is like the ITU lab that is being in the program. Yeah, I would love to hear more about that.

Speaker 2: 7:46

Yeah, sure, so we did that last semester in Biostem one. We're in Biostem two now in the spring semester. But the ITU lab was really the first that the students and looked at manipulation of DNA. We talked about that as kind of a smaller focus of the Biostem curriculum and really that's what's so great about some of the bio builder labs is they're bringing that idea of DNA manipulation right and genetic modification and really bringing it into the classroom, to the labs, into the real world for these students. But the ITU lab was the first look at that and it was really incredible to see some of the students actually understand the DNA as code and get over that kind of hump and thinking about it as something that can be changed and modified in that way, just like computer code. And the ITU lab helps so much for that.

Speaker 2: 8:42

They I mean you just did that concept, but even in laboratory practice it's right helped them work through culturing bacteria in agar plates or in clinical tubes. We have an incubator but we don't have one that has a movable shelf. So we've got a few problems we have to get over for that. So it kind of teaches students some laboratory problem solving skills. They had to use micro pipettes, which is something they're likely to use quite a bit in a laboratory setting outside of high school and really taught them data and patients.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Those two are essential things to having a lab and the first time through, not all of them worked. The colors worked as deep as we expected them to be in certain trials and I mean I think part of that was in my culturing of the bacteria, for being honest. But errors in those kind of labs I mean we've stopped to talk about right and we can get to the conclusion part of our lab reports and really stop to think about, well, I mean, did Mr Carrier culture the bacteria fully? Did we do the steps that we were supposed to in the procedure? Why did this trial here work where this trial here didn't work? And introducing those kind of discussions to the classroom was amazing Really. The way into that iTunes lab, I mean there's no way that I could have put that together without the bio builder cell and especially being able to use the E Coli like that. Yeah, yeah, it was amazing and, like you said, I didn't do anything like that in high school. First time I did anything like that was in biology and college.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Yeah, like the same, it's yeah. Yeah, it's so important that these concepts are so tricky to understand, sometimes, like DNA is code and how you manipulate it and how it's also being used in the real world right now to solve real problems, and I think that's super great that they're being exposed to that. Some like the fundamental bio principles. I think once you have that really solid foundation, then only are you able to get creative later on as a scientist or working in any industry. Really, how many students did the Biosyn program?

Speaker 2: 11:07

Well, for Biosyn one we had 50, and in Biosyn two we have 12 ranges from like freshman to senior.

Speaker 1: 11:15

I guess there's a, I guess more of freshmen, and where is it a bussard distribution way?

Speaker 2: 11:21

Well, the first biosyn one was pretty much just freshman software. I say pretty much, it was entirely just freshman software, mostly freshman. It stood where biology won did for those students, because in Canada it was Bio1 and in fact we took the end-of-course exam, like the Tennessee State Biology exam, at the end of the class, the end of the semester. So that was a bunch of freshmen and a few sophomore. But in BioStem 2, I did take two students who were seniors, who didn't have BioStem 1 last semester, who had taken biology I'm sure they're freshmen or sophomore years long before we offered BioStem 1 and and but they were interested in the program and so I let one of them in who hadn't gone on to any other biology and the other one is my student Aind and he's already taken AP buyer. So I kind of like both of them in because they were interested in the program. Yeah, yeah, and that's been great and they're really there. I mean all the students really enjoyed BioStem 2.

Speaker 1: 12:26

And how do you go about, like you know, developing curriculum and you know, incorporating BioBuilder while also, you know, satisfying the requirements to graduate high school for AP Bio and Biology 1, etc. I'm sure that's a challenge. But what I wanted to specifically ask was I know a lot of BioBuilder teachers, teachers. They sort of take feedback and then you know, run a lab and they take feedback from students from one Bible, not just from their students but from, you know, other Bible clubs around the, you know around the US, and then they use that feedback to you know, reiterate and improve, continuously improve, their lab or the way they're teaching. I'm not, this is a bit of a broad question, but I'd love to hear if how that process is going for you as well, like improving on feedback and incorporating something new into, like each program or, you know, each session in Hawaii.

Speaker 2: 13:31

Well, sure, and that is important to think about, especially as we're starting a completely new program we don't have experienced. Necessarily to go off of this program is not entirely new. Obviously, biobuilders is very similar to the Biostem curriculum where it hits a lot of the same subject matter. There are other sort of similar Biostem programs in other states and we've been able to look at their standards and their curriculums as well. So far, being able to compare the Biostem course to the Biology course at the High School, given us a little bit inside into how the students feel about the course itself. But in terms of how we build feedback into the writing process, we have had a writing team that's gone through and has written the curriculum for Biostem 1 and 2 that we have so far. But we are about to expand that writing team. In fact we have a meeting for that on Monday with Nysfonger to bring this course into Greenville High School, cherokee High School, several other high schools in the area, and we brought them on in the new writing team to have new eyes to reassess the Biostem 1 and 2 curriculum and in fact what we're going to do is try and have the Biology EOC end-of-course exam at the end of Biostem 2. So then you have two seminars to cover all three sets of those standards Biology 1, biostem 1, and Biostem 2. And that should be awesome and that should be really doable.

Speaker 2: 15:13

It was hard to stuff Biology 1 and Biostem 1 into one semester, yeah, which in hindsight should have made sense, but I think doing all three of those over two semesters makes a lot of sense, and so we've had struggles through this. Like I said at the beginning, we're kind of building the ship as it sails, but we're trying to keep fresh eyes and keep changing how we think about this program as it's built. That's certainly a stretch about feedback, but you asked a question earlier, maybe in that email, about Pedagogy how I guess we kind of crafted or thought about crafting this curriculum. I don't know if that was part of the question you were asking fear or not.

Speaker 1: 16:04

It's. Yeah, that's a great follow-up question that you asked yourself, so continue down that line With that.

Speaker 2: 16:13

It's certainly been interesting too, especially when I think about it. I mean, I certainly experience in an industrial high-reparatory, I have experience in all industries, but at the end of the day that's not exactly what I am preparing the students for. Certainly good, very similar, but that's not all the way. Yeah, yeah, well, and that's nice, that's good, but I guess we're mostly just training them how to think like a scientist that works in the laboratory, how to assess a certain problem from an engineering mindset right, using engineering design process and assessing a situation, breaking it down into parts, problem solving right when you don't have the materials that you need in the lab or, whatever the case may be, having the patience that one needs to admit when one has to start over or go nice and slowly, especially in titrations.

Speaker 2: 17:21

I do a titration lab not because oh yeah, yeah, I'll do what I'll be getting in the year, and not because it has anything to do with the concepts, but just to teach them patience. And after a couple trials of messing it up right, they start to get it and they'll get one drop and then I'll hand them a pipe out of the Bacer acid right and go back and forth, back and forth. Just sit right there in the public change. Yeah, yeah, look, just float out guys.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Speaking of machines and not machines of equipment, but you know, and machines Um. One video I saw which was really, really cool was off the robot drone big. Yes, I've always wanted to buy a drone. I think I'm saving up. Those things are expensive but I'm saving. Also, I saw I've seen a few videos of the robot drone league Online where people are like racing drones at crazy speed and I said this is pretty, really cool. And then I saw a video of the robot drone league that Bible that was involved with there's like a scare crow they were looking at, like finding a moving Disney's corn, and I was like, yes, that is incredible, yeah, yeah. So I, yeah, I really want you to, yeah, talk me through, like John Lee, what's going on with Bible there and what the what the students are involved with. I think that's super, super sick oh.

Speaker 2: 18:53

Yeah, it's, it's so cool. So the robot drone league Is one of two competitive robotics leagues that we are in. The other one is underwater. Both helped with my strength, but robot drone week bio builders helped craft a challenge that we had to overcome in the most recent championship competition. And here grows the theme of this one. So it's very agriculture themed, right, it's all about different farm applications.

Speaker 2: 19:26

There's a chapter that one has to move, some gates that have to be opened, some plants that need to be inspected, some insects need to be removed. I mean, there's no way that I can go through all of the different challenges and honestly, I don't know them. The students might be able to go through all of them with you, but there's a lot of things that have to be done and you have a pretty sizable team of students that are in the pit, that are running through this competition. And yeah, I mean there's, yeah, it's pretty, it's really cool. So they have a Robot in a drone. That's the robot drog leak. The robot is a rover, so kind of a, you know, small, four-wheels, square sort of rover. If you're imagining a lunar lander, then you're giving it a little bit too much credit, but that kind of idea. And then there's a drone which serve as kind of the ice in the sky and two different students who are in the pit are gonna be operating those two exclusively one person on the rover and the other one on the joint and the rover.

Speaker 2: 20:34

One of the competition or challenges of the competition is it needs to inspect a field of corn. Some of those corn are infected with the fungus and I'm pretty sure they did pick a specific fungus, but again I couldn't tell you what it is. But there's a specific fungus that infects the corn and the rover has to go out and collect samples of the infected corn and bring that back to the pit, at which point they're given Petri dishes which represent the samples, for I had taken from the court. Those Petri dishes are giving to a bio builders lab essentially right which is the tower that sits in the middle of competition. But you have to stick the Petri dish into this slot like a coin in an arcade game.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Oh, nice, yes. And naturally the bio builders slot machine spits out a modified seed. Modified seed is resilient to St Fungus. The rover takes that over to the field, drops that in a little pot, kind of represents the hole in the ground and then replants this genetically modified corn that is resilient to the fungus that is infecting the prop. So that's the bio builders challenge in the scarecrow competition. Very, very cool.

Speaker 1: 21:59

That was great. That's awesome. And what I really liked about the Bible, the Robert Drone League you know, in the cornfield and how you explained everything. Thank you for your work. Me too, that was also like some of the Bible students you know, also asking themselves the question in high school like why is it important to generate new resistance streams of crop right Like the pest resistance or climate resistance? You know improving the yield and you know food security. Deciding to think about these questions at such an early age and how you can use what you've learned you know in your classroom right now to start having that problem, and I think that is really really great. That opportunity is there for these students.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Absolutely. And then that's what Biobilder does. Man, we are just finishing up the O that Smell Lab right now. They are writing the conclusion to the RELAB report on Monday. Not all of those trials worked very well too, and that, I do think, is because I did not culture that bacteria problem. Yeah, yeah, I need to go back to school on streaking agar plates, but in going through that, you know, not all of that was giving off the smells that we expected. But going back to the application we are gonna do, the golden bread lab, and what I am so excited about that is I hope it will begin to click for the students what all of this means. Because modifying E coli DNA in the lab, you know that's fun, right, it's basically just a game. But when you're modifying yeast and making bread that has a vitamin that people actually need and don't get enough in their dinin', now we're talking about things that actually make the world a better place and using the synthetic biology in that way, right, I hope we'll get the students excited about the little concept.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Final, question, ah well, is you had mentioned that you, you know, were studying for pre-med and you were going down that path, and it was. You realize you had this passion for teaching and you that's you know. Then you went on to do the master's degree in education and now you're here, which is getting to work with Bible or by STEM, and some of the amazing students that you're working with and interested in talking about that moment where you're making the decision to go and do the master's of education I'd love to like hear more about. You know, maybe it was like an evening, or like reflecting in your journal. What was written in that journal. I'm just curious to see what sort of questions were you asking yourself while trying to making this move into teaching.

Speaker 2: 25:11

Yeah, I mean, it really is so much fun and passion teaching. It's something that I've always wanted. Even in middle school and high school wanted to be a teacher, but I guess I wasn't 100% sure and wanted to explore a little bit. And my father encouraging me to explore, wanting me to go to a liberal arts college to have the opportunity to kind of take a bunch of different things, William and Mary, that's why I ended up on the radar. I love sciences. I've always wanted to be a history teacher, actually of all things, of all subjects to teach, and history is my favorite subject probably. But I love sciences and science is awesome and got into brain science, which really brought me back to kind of the chemistry angle in teaching.

Speaker 2: 26:01

But in taking different things, william and Mary, and kind of I don't know investigating in different pathways, right, found myself back into the sciences but the pre-med path I was never really full wholeheartedly in right man you really have to be and as I kept, I guess, grappling with that, it wasn't really a single moment but more over time in realizing that you know I should just go and get my master's in education and teach like I have always wanted. But instead of teaching history like I have always wanted, we really need good Slade's teachers and maybe I should do that and I had enough credits at that point in my right to do chemistry. So that's what I landed on, instead of saying bio or something you know that brought me to the master's in chemistry. But I've always helped with you, said my church and things, and volunteered at schools and tutoring and such.

Speaker 2: 27:09

Yeah, yeah yeah, I guess teaching's really always been a passion.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Thanks Once again to Billy for joining me today. I had a lot of fun recording this episode and I'm really excited to hear that the Buy Someone program is being adopted by several more schools next year. What truly struck me as insightful and inspiring was Billy's approach to engaging his students with the core objective of synthetic biology. In one of the Bible the lab sessions, they worked on modifying yeast to produce bread enriched with a vitamin lacking in certain populations. This project really exemplified the transformative potential of synthetic biology as a positive tool for change, highlighting the science's ultimate goal of improving the world. I feel this episode will be useful to anyone interested in learning more about the impact of synthetic biology, as well as learning more about the Buy A STEM One program. If you would like to learn more about anything else Billy and I discussed today, please refer to the show notes. Join me for the next Biobilder podcast. We'll welcome another wonderful guest whose career has been influenced by Biobilder's life-changing science. See you next time.