 Hello everyone, I want to welcome you to the fifth installment of the NHGRI bold predictions, some seminar series. For those of you that have been here before that you'll know what has inspired them, I'll take a minute to show you where you can find all of their predictions. As I said, the fifth installment in the seminar series, and it was inspired by the production of and publication of NHGRI strategic plan at the end of the last year in that plan. We put forth 10 bold predictions for the future of genomics, each one being something that we have not yet achieved that we hope we will achieve, either in the next decade or the next 100 years. And we built a seminar series around each one of those bold predictions, this is seminar series number five so at the end of this program you open halfway through the seminar series. They will continue on through the summer, you can find them in the strategic plan which is linked off of our website. And today, we're going to focus in on a very special one and this today will be slightly different from some of the other seminars because we're moving to a topic that is the utmost importance for the future of the field. And the bold prediction for today, sorry is studies that involve genome sequences associated with phenotypic information for millions of human participants we rate regularly featured at science school science fairs. And this is to take advantage of the vast quantities of data that we're producing both on genomics as well as on phenotypic information. Instead of utilizing these data in the high tech environment, we want to democratize these to make sure they're available for everyone. So today what we've done is invited to very special presenters to talk about how we can get to that vision how can we get students at science fairs at the high school maybe junior high school level to access data. And to do so, we have invited two people who have made their career. All to enhance genomics education and enhance education in general. This, I would say that anyone listening here has had at least someone in their past would be a teacher or parent who has helped egg them on and put them forward on their course. Teachers tend to be selfless and inspiring and we have to really stick to our teachers here today to discuss the topic. First is Neil Lam is at the Hudson Alpha Institute, where he's the Vice President of Educational Outreach. And he began his career at the Emory University in the Human Genetics Department we were just talking that Neil and I overlapped very briefly when I was visiting there, many, many years ago. But since his finishing his degree he's taken a course through it to be a champion for education. And he will tell you a little bit about his past because I think some of you want to know how do you get how do you get Neil's job and how do you get Chandra's job. Our second presenter is Chandra Jefferson, who right now is working on Capitol Hill. She made her claim to fame as being a spectacular teacher in the Fairfair County School District in Windsboro, South Carolina, where she had won numerous awards and been promoted to being the chair of the science department. She has sought out fellowships to learn how to become a better teacher when she's already spectacular that's another life lesson you can always be better. And currently she is an Albert Einstein distinguished education fellow working on Capitol Hill to promote STEM and education policy. She just told us a few minutes ago she plans to stay on Capitol Hill for a little bit longer to try to get the folks on Capitol Hill to understand how important science education is. As I mentioned, they will tell you a little bit about how they got there so I'm going to leave out some of the background information that we would normally provide you about the candidate. We're also not doing what has been done in the past where we have one person give a talk and another person give a talk and then do Q&A afterwards. We are going to have the Q&A at the end as well as a discussion at the end, but Neil and Chandra know how to get information across and said it's much more effective if the two of them have a conversation and do a little bit of a storytelling. So, we have learned how best to present science from Neil and Chandra. With that I'm going to turn the program over to them. We will leave time at the end for answering Q&As that you can send in the button at the bottom of the Zoom screen. You cannot do the chat function but you can send in the question and answer function and that will be sent centrally and we'll try to get to as many questions at the end as we can. So, I will now turn it over to Neil and Chandra. Thank you, Larry. We are really glad to be here and Shonda and I are excited to spend some time with you talking about this bold prediction number five. We're going to start actually telling you a little bit more about ourselves and Shonda, ladies first, so why don't you go on ahead and start. Absolutely. Thank you. We're so happy to be here once again. My name is Shonda Jefferson and I'm a high school science teacher and STEM educator in Fairfield County School District. I've been teaching STEM for about 10 years and I especially have focused in Title I schools and my passion is for serving historically under served students and giving them access to opportunity and STEM. And before I get started, you know, to tell a little bit about myself, I have to tell you about the two ladies who sparked my love for science. The first one was my mom. My mama bought me a microscope when I was seven years old. And I was like a little Einstein with that microscope. And then when I was in high school, I had a science teacher her name was Miss Glover. She was my only my first and only African American female science teacher who just poured into me and instilled that love for science and caused me to pursue a degree in biological sciences. So the same way that she poured into me. That's a passion that I have for my students and I try to pour into their lives on a daily basis. I believe that all students can learn science and in order for them to learn science. I have to make sure that science is a part of their everyday life or it connects with their everyday lives, whether it's their community, its pop culture, all of those different facets of life and that takes creativity and innovations. When my students walk through the doors of my classroom, I encourage them to take on the role of a scientist, and I try to create experiences in my classroom so that kids can develop a love a greater love and appreciation for science. Those innovative ideas and that creativity led me to be a name the 2020 South Carolina Teacher of the Year, where I was a voice and an advocate for over 55,000 teachers in our state. And I was able to share my love for science and share resources with the teachers across the state, and also advocate for diversifying the teacher workforce. So I'm an advocate for equity. I believe that all students should have access to a high quality and equitable education. And in order for our students, more students to go into STEM fields and for us to have representation in STEM, we need to have a diverse education workforce. So I've toured the country and spoke with legislators. I spoke with higher education officials about different ways and different strategies that we can utilize to diversify the education workforce. And I am a lifelong learner in order to make my class exciting. I sought out opportunities outside of my rural school district outside of my state so that I can connect with renowned scientists, learn about the cutting edge scientific research to bring back that information to my students so that they can have access to it and explore the wide range and array of opportunities that are out there for STEM career, because my goal is for students to go into and explore these STEM careers and if it started with that one teacher I want to be that one teacher that sparks that interest for my students as you guys can see in the picture with my student Hannah as she observes those mealworms. And if I could share, you know, one thing one of my core values and it goes back to this song which was one of Martin Luther King's favorite hymns it says if I can help somebody as I travel along if I can share somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody who's traveling wrong, then my living shall not be in vain. I feel like I was called to serve. And in this capacity I'm able to serve students. I'm able to serve teachers and I'm able to share my love for science and I hope that, you know, we have a bright future in the area of genomic I'm just happy to be here today and share some of the ways that I involve my community and my students in STEM to prepare for this bold prediction. All right, Neil, take it away. All right, fantastic. So I'll tell you my background and my story. And since the bold prediction involves the idea of students doing genomic information and science fairs I thought I would start with middle school, Neil. I grew up with me and a science fair project. I grew up the son of an engineer and so my science fair projects early on tended towards engineering that was what I was around. We're just going to ignore whatever it is that's going on with my hair in this photo I think I'm probably like 12 in this picture but anyway, one of the key things, Sean to talked about people who had an impact on her life. This is miss Francis Bowman and miss Bowman was my seventh grade science teacher at Hickson junior high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And she was an inspiration for me I was partly terrified of her, but I was also totally fascinated by all of the things that she brought into my world and experience. And one of my key touch points was in the spring of my seventh grade year when our assignment was to go get a container of water from somewhere in our neighborhood to be from your faucet and there was a pond up the street from me. So I got this little container was clear there were you know I thought there was nothing in it. And together, she had this really cool microscope with two eyepieces so we could both look at the same time. We looked in, and this was what I saw, and I was captivated. And as I lead education programs now as I lead a team developing education, we try to come back to this type of story that it was the right hook the right activity, and the right piece of equipment. That can turn somebody on to the wonders of science. So this is my kind of career path from my undergrad all the way through to my job here at Hudson Alpha. And you'll look at this, and you'll see that one of these things is not like the other. And that's the two years that I took after I finished my PhD and did a brief postdoc and worked in a large community church in Atlanta, Georgia before coming back to Emory in a different role. And the point that I want to make here, this experience was so important for me. It put me in a place where I had to talk science I had to explain science in the intersection, or the challenges between science and faith I had to talk about ethics I had to put my science into practice and make it understandable. And that's a skill I use every day in my current job. So the unexpected career path sometimes is incredibly valuable. So don't shy away from it don't have you know someone says well that's the end of your career if you go there. That certainly is not the case. Look for the opportunities look for the skills you can pick up. I'm now at Hudson Alpha it's a nonprofit genomics Institute in Huntsville, Alabama. It's this really amazing blend of 16 research scientists all focused on genomics some in human health, some in agriculture. On the same campus there are 48 biotechnology companies, some with three or four people some with 100 people, and then I lead a team of 18 educators and workforce development and genetic counselors. And so it's the blend of the research science and the companies showing the application and the education and every day. I and my team look for ways to take that incredible science and the science of other people around the world and turn that into things that help people understand the field of genomics more and prepare tomorrow's workforce. So with that let's jump into our bold prediction you've already seen that from Larry. This is an idea that using genomic sequence and phenotypic information is going to be regularly featured in school science fairs. So, Shonda let's talk about our first impression so when you first saw that bold prediction. What kind of went through your mind. This expression was excitement because as a teacher, I was like I can't wait to facilitate this type of learning with my students because I host science fairs within my school so we have STEM fairs every year. And you know right now, some of my students have some of the basic experiments so I was like you know I cannot wait to see students actually analyzing genomic sequences, and this being a part of our stem fair and I was like you know, thinking about my students going from our school science fair to our state science fair to the, you know, national, all of that, with this type of experience, this type of experimentation so this is all exciting and I can't wait to learn and facilitate this type of learning with my students. I was really, I was really excited about it as well I mean you saw the picture of me doing science fairs to think about actually using genomic sequence. It is really cool and then my next thought was wow there is a lot of work to this you know, one of my early science fair projects, I decided I was going to try to clone plant cells from from carrots. And so I got this kit and I set it up in my mom's kitchen, and then like my go bacteria took over and we had to have the kitchen professionally fumigated and I was banned from using that and not in my house. In my mind, I thought, you know, there are some equally challenging issues that we're going to have to get our head around to make sure that we don't end up having to do the equivalent of shutting something down, because a project got out of hand. So, so for those of you that are watching. There are six key topic areas that Shonda and I want to talk about we're going to alternate things that have to get put in place. Some at the at the school level that middle and high school system, some in the scientific field in order for this bold prediction, really to come to pass and so we're just going to alternate our way through. So let's start with our first. And Shonda that goes to you. Yes, so definitely looking at the foundational genetics knowledge and I have to put this in here. Neil, I think you are actually the little Einstein you had me be running around with my little microscope if you got shut out from the kitchen I have to throw that in there. But definitely looking at the foundational genomics now genetics knowledge can you go to the next slide please. Thank you. So I think about communities when I think about this topic. And it reminded me of one of the quotes from one of my favorite books, the immortal life of Henrietta Lex, where Lawrence Lex says can you tell me what my mama sales really did he whisper. They did something important, but nobody tells us. So the community, they would like to know more information about the basics of DNA what is the structure. How does it affect our traits and in this picture. I actually set up I requested, or asked the South Carolina, etv so education television, if I could present basic information to the public about DNA. So this was my way to kind of celebrate DNA and share that information with the public. So, can you tell me what DNA really is that's what the community would like to know and we have to figure out creative ways to communicate that information. Next slide please. One way that we do that I think it starts with educator professional development educators are the closest to the community and the closest to our kids. So in allowing science teachers to attend amazing professional development so that they can gain the knowledge that they need to share this information about genomics and break it down so that it's understandable for the public. So I had the opportunity to attend the Princeton University molecular biology Institute, where I learned the basics of genetics, and I learned about DNA isolation, I learned about bacterial transformation, and I did it alongside scientists and science teachers. One of my favorite courses to attend, shout out to the National Human Genome Research Institute. They host this short genomics course where we're able to learn about the cutting edge research in genomics as well, and work alongside educators from across the nation. So we develop lifelong relationships with educators so some of these educators actually facilitate biotechnology experiments in their classroom. And if I want to try something in my rural classroom, I can reach out to them it's like you always have this network, and they provide you with a plethora of resources to take back to your classroom. So, I love this professional development and that's where we start with that foundational knowledge. Next slide please. After I gather this knowledge I take it to my classroom with my students, and to teach my students that the foundation of DNA. Of course I have to make it fun so one of my favorite projects to do in class is have your DNA and eat it too and as you can see my students enjoy learning about the basic structure of DNA using these twizzlers and marshmallows, and then I do something called scaffolding so I scaffold them to learn about some of the more advanced techniques in biotechnology. So you can see students loading the gel electrophoresis machines there and they learn a little bit about DNA barcoding, and hopefully we'll get closer to analyzing DNA sequences which is advanced in my class. And one picture that I want to point out here if you look in the upper left corner one of the students that was him in ninth grade. And then if you look down in the middle. That's me and that same student he said Miss Jefferson, the experience that you provided me and in your classes as a high school teacher. It made me want to pursue a career in biological sciences and biochemistry so I'm standing with that student in as his parent, when he was inducted into the his honor society the health science society at his college, and he'll be graduating this year on with a great a degree in biochemistry. So, this is full circle for me the things that we do in our classrooms, they're very important so next slide please. So after I teach my students and prepare them for these advanced techniques, I allow them to go out and do outreach in the community so these are some of my students doing science experiments on the lawn or on the sidewalk, and doing a strawberry DNA extraction. So this is a way that my students take the knowledge and apply it in the community and one of our favorite videos the strawberry DNA extraction video involves Dr. Carla Easter and Dr. Eric Green from the National Human Genome Research Institute. So, yes, this has been amazing and these are some of the foundational skills that the students need to know teachers need to know and how my students actually shared in the community. I think that concept of scaffolding becomes so important Shonda because we've got to give them basic concepts and then we've got to build the pathways that that bring students to more complex and that's really point number two, which is we've got to move beyond a focus on single Mendelian genes and building Punnett squares. Teachers are experts at Punnett squares. Teachers can teach students how to do some Punnett squares, but we need to actually think about going far beyond that if we're going to get to our bold prediction. About 10 years ago, Mike Docherty, who at that point in time led the education initiative for the American Society of Human Genetics. He and his team did an analysis of the current state standards in life science and compared them to see what how they stacked up against what ASHG had said students needed to understand about genomics and they found that there were huge gaps that there was a huge disparity. And then in 2015, with the release of the next generation science standards, which intentionally were designed, yes to focus on content, but also to blend in the practices of engineering and science and cross cutting concepts, and have students move beyond memorization to understanding how science works as a student. At that point with NGSS, Mike's group went back and looked at how does the NGSS standards compare against the key pieces of what ASHG felt students needed to know. I'm going to show you a piece of that 2015 paper. On the left hand side of the screen, these are the key categories of what ASHG felt students needed to be able to understand, you know, the basic nature of genetic material that, you know, DNA and the structure of DNA, how DNA is transmitted and patterns of inheritance, not just single gene but multifactorial, all of these key pieces. I'm going to break one of my own key rules of education, which is I'm going to show you a part of a slide that has way too many words on it, but I want you not to focus on the words. I want you to focus on the patterns of colors, specifically the orange, the yellow and the blue, because I'm going to show you the findings of the 2015 paper. And if it's orange, it means that the concept wasn't even covered in the content, either the state standards or the next generation standards. If it's yellow, it was there, but it wasn't adequately covered. And if it's blue, then it was fully covered. So here we go. All right. So what I want you to see is that the nature of genetic material at the top and the evolution at the bottom are both blue. Our standards do a fairly good job of providing that coverage. But there's a whole lot of orange and yellow in the middle of that. And again, don't get hung up. Don't try to read what those other pieces are. But the point is, we still are not doing a good job of providing the scaffolding to get us beyond the basics. And if you look at that in even more detail, these are the kinds of things that we need to make sure we have hands on materials for and that we are providing content to educators to be comfortable to bring this content to their students. This is what we're going to need students to master in order for us to meet our bold prediction in order for students to be doing something with this. And I truly believe the heart, the spirit of that bold prediction is not just that the high flying students, not just that the straight A students are going to be using genomic information, but that it is to use Chandra's words democratize that more students have access maybe Larry's the one that used the word democratize but to take it out of the hands of just the top students. So here are some groups that are actually giving us additional content and scaffolds I just want to throw out my portions of the talk, highlight some resources that are actually doing what we need to do to get us to the prediction. This is learn dot genetics it's put together by the genetic science Learning Center in Salt Lake City it's led by Louisa Stark. They do a wonderful job of creating resources that talk about things like complex genetics and epigenetics and precision medicine in student friendly terms. And then they have a companion site called teach job dot genetics that's designed for the educators that provides them with additional resources and how you incorporate this into the class and the way that you ask assessment questions and how you know that you're actually helping your students grasp this content. I created the have your DNA and eat it to model. Yes, I love that one. It's a great, great group my my hat is off to the work that they do and Louisa does a fantastic job. And it's not surprising that her group actually now has the all of us community engagement piece because they have really mastered how you think about having conversations with different audiences. Another resource is Howard Hughes Medical Institute their bio interactive site it's full of great videos and additional content like talking about skin color and human evolution or uses of genetics in a forensic setting. Certainly NHGRI has a whole set of resources and fact sheets that students and educators can use as well that take us to the next level, and then I just have to plug one piece from Hudson Alpha that we crafted specifically to help students understand complex genomic traits and the inheritance. Huntsville is a huge space city the Space and Rocket Center is here a lot of NASA work is here. So we created a serious game that has students play the role of a human resources team member, working with an upcoming 20 year launch on a mission to Triton which is a moon of Neptune. And so each student picks one member of the crew, and they look at for that member of the crew, they look at their family history. They look at their most recent medical record and they look at a set of snips for six different complex diseases, and they determine the overall risk for that crew member to develop these diseases based on all three of those pieces of information and how they weight them. And then, instead of working individually they work with five other classmates, each one representing one of the crew members and now they have to pack the spaceship with things that they need to help keep their individual crew members healthy. And there's not enough room to take everything. So you've got to decide what's most important based on the risks that you're dealing with, and then you launch the ship and you see if you were successful and if the crew survived. These are the kinds of activities that take students beyond the basics and expose them to the nuances associated with the field of genomics, especially as we think about it in a medical context. Okay, Shonda back to you. Yeah, I had a comment on that. I am excited about introducing my students to that Hudson Alpha game because that is definitely, as you mentioned we're taking students beyond the hitchhiker's thumb, experimentation the tongue rolling, just that basic identification and providing them with these advanced studies so. Another thing that we would like to talk about is breaking down barriers to access. And as a rural teacher, you know this is something that I encounter as I try to give my students access to more of these event events studies and experimentation in genomics can you go to the next slide please. So where I teach I want to tell you guys a little bit about that I teach in Fairfield County School District, and we serve approximately 2500 students and it is in rural South Carolina, you go on to the next one. And I want to give you a sneak peek into my classroom I told my students anytime that I speak that I will take them with me and I'm going to introduce them to the world. This is my science class and when students walk into my classroom, we are a family. They know that they are now members of the geek squad and geek stands for great experimenters exhibiting knowledge of science, and they stay lit and that means leading and quiet about the world and teaching what they know. And in this particular picture and you might not be able to see it but my students are actually utilizing probe where and the probe where was borrowed from a university, which was about an hour away from our school so I had to call up the university to say hey, I want my kids to participate in this amazing study. Can I please borrow some equipment so I had to drive to get the equipment and bring it back, but my students were so excited because they're utilizing equipment that college students and researchers are using. So I want to talk a little bit about the barriers that we have to break down in order for students to get to this place. Can you go to the next slide please. So barriers to access. The first thing that I would like to talk about is the the rural broadband access in rural Winsborough, South Carolina, all of my students did not have do not have internet access. So if they needed to go away from school or away from one of our mobile hotspot locations, they would not necessarily have access to some of the programs that require the internet to access some of the genomics, large databases and such. And in the classroom, the bandwidth within our school so thinking about infrastructure. If they open up some of the programs the computers crash, because we don't have the bandwidth to support some of the large data sets and another thing a barrier that I spoke about prior to this is equipment. So in my current school, we had, when I arrived we had about three micro pipettes. So imagine having a class of 33, and trying to teach kids how to load a well and jello electrophoresis sharing that small amount of equipment. And resources as a first year teacher I can tell you, I did not have a thorough understanding of genetic genomics and microbiology or molecular biology. That's why I sought to go out to other places to get those resources. And when I went to Princeton they actually shipped me kit so that my students could have access to experimentation. And I learned how to connect with local university so scientists in my area, you know the closest university is about an hour away. So that is definitely another access or a barrier to access, and even trying to get my students to some of these locations where I'm doing the experiment is not that we don't have access to a bus, but, you know, paying for for the gas to go in the bus or find it paying the driver salary. All of these are barriers that we come into when I'm trying to get students a way to experience science in this way and to prepare them for conquering or preparing them for this bold prediction, but I have some solutions to these barriers and ways that I've been able to work around it to make sure my students do get wonderful experience in my classroom, you go to the next slide. So solutions in South Carolina we have a genetic center it's called the Greenwood genetic center and they wrote a grant to the National Science Foundation for mobile science labs. And this mobile science lab does it comes in parks in our rural school area, and students are able to perform several different experiments in genomics and molecular biology investigation so the mystery of the crooked cell DNA isolation, and just some of the basic courses as well. We also have colleges that have outreach center so Clemson universities science outreach center, they have the genetics training center so they provide professional development for teachers in areas where we want to build up and help with our misconceptions. We also have the opportunity to take our students so here I took my advanced students to the Clemson university science outreach students center to participate in this DNA isolation activity, and several more experiments that they were able to perform during that day. Another thing that I've done is partner with the Greenwood genetic center and we are in discussion about creating these rural science hubs, so that these hubs will be set up as access spots for scientists. And the community to interact with students and just for them to be able to check out resources to do more advanced experimentation and they'll always be there for teachers to access and for students to access. And one more thing that I did not list here on my previous slide I had the applications of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, when I couldn't reach my kids. Via the internet, all of my students have a cell phone. So we also need to think about how we can make applications that allow students to access some of the protein data banks and do the genetic genomics analysis as well so those are some of the ways that I think we'll be able to alleviate and break down some of the barriers to students access in this information and rural areas. And Shonda, there are a handful of states around the country that have those either mobile science labs or walkers of content that they that they send Alabama has a statewide program. The challenge is not just getting the content but making sure that educators are comfortable using it and that administrators actually are willing to let administrators use that we've had some challenges where principals have said you know I need you don't need to be doing that you need to be focusing on this over here so so it is really helping people understand at all levels why this content is valuable and how putting this into the hands of teachers that are well prepared and confident is so beneficial to students. Absolutely and I think that's where the science hubs they can service training centers for educators and I know you know like I said my background was in plant physiology so the molecular biology, you know I have to go out to places or call up to places that I knew from my university like hey can you help me out with this or I want to perform this experiment, can you walk me through it and, you know, later on they started developing training sessions like you all do at Hudson Alpha and those are very beneficial to teachers like myself I really appreciate having that opportunity. We won't talk about it here but we could spend an entire session talking about the need to integrate this at the pre service level so in college for people that want to become secondary science teachers. How do we equip them with this content so they come to the classroom already knowing this but again we will not have time for us to cover that today. Stick around and have that discussion with us, but so I'm going to move us on so one of the next pieces is how do we create data analysis tools that students can grasp they could that have some hooks that they can understand. One of the things that I love about being a human geneticist that I am so proud of our community is the willingness to share the data to make things accessible and to share the tools that are created to analyze that data that I've always been so proud of that collaborative kind of piece. But that's a real challenge when you try to put that in the hands of a high school teacher or student, I went to get hub and I typed in genetics, and there's 9,000 different resources. And you know if you put a high school student in front of the genome browser that the challenges around that. What we end up doing, if we expect students to work with the current existing tools is something that feels much more like this where we're students and teachers have no sense of how they even take the first step into what feels like falling off into a giant precipice. So back to your word, Shonda scaffold. How do we think about scaffolding students to help them with some of these experiences. Charlie Ray leads the education program at the Jackson labs and they have a great project called teaching the genome generation that does just that is the professional learning, like what Shonda spoke about that introduces them to genomics and bioinformatics. Something similar is done at Cold Spring Harbor with the Dolan DNA Learning Center and Dave Miklos. They focus not only on what goes in classrooms and kits and activities in classrooms but a lot of citizen science work, and they've become real experts at DNA barcoding, looking at small pieces of DNA and and using the informatics to determine where that system fits into the larger phylogenetic tree. They have a whole project looking at ants and and and other insects and bugs to think about what that works. And they've built a project program called DNA subway, and it's a set of bioinformatics tools and this screenshot, you know just like a subway through Washington DC or Boston. There are different lines different and those lines go through different routes and sometimes they converge and sometimes they're different spaces. And each one of these lines is a modified set of bioinformatics tools that annotate genome sequences or that analyze transcript data. This is like informatics with training wheels on it and I think it becomes so valuable to give those students a taste of what this looks like. We just recently used DNA subway at Hudson Alpha Alabama just celebrated its 200th anniversary of childhood and we partnered with 24 high schools around the state to catalog native Alabama plants in their communities and partnerships with botanical gardens and nature preserves and master gardeners. And the students went out and identified plants and took a couple of leaf samples and extracted DNA. And in many cases they sent them back to us for the for the PCR we send it off, you know for sequencing and then send it back and then they worked through the annotation. And identified, you know, dozens and dozens of truly Alabama native plants and this was a great way to take the diversity of the state of Alabama, the resources that are in a students in a community's backyard, and these cutting edge tools, but the scaffold of DNA subway was so valuable. You see the same sort of thing with the Science Olympiad protein modeling is now a part of one of the competitions of the Science Olympiad and Tim Herman and the Center for biomolecular modeling in Wisconsin have built a whole set of educational programs in partnership with the protein data bank students actually in this part of the competition, they use Styrofoam tubers to build three dimensional models of proteins, and then they go into to Jamal and they build and work with manipulating those different protein models. This is the kind of thing that again we need to continue scaffolding, but we need to figure out how we get this into broader numbers of classrooms and how we make sure that they are doing the same sort of of piece. Shonda. Yes, so now we're going to go into framing the conversation appropriately when we're talking about like genetic disorders. How can we make sure that we communicate this well with our students and that they interpret this properly. And you know that is not something that turns into a joke when we talk about this topic but it's something that kids look at and they want to go deeper gain a deeper understanding about these topics. So can you go to the next slide for me. One of the ways that I do this when my students do genetic projects in my classroom, every high school teacher probably does this when we do our genetic disorders projects. Students choose a project and they do the research on it and they present. And sometimes we know that kids at all levels dealing with maturity. They could turn this project it kind of take a turn for the worse. But this project I take it kind of like as a theme that goes along with my, we are family in my classroom culture, and I turned it into something about choosing kindness and acceptance so I'll start with something like this meet Maddie. And Maddie is a fun loving kind sweet girl. She loves to sing and dance and Maddie is my niece. She has an extra chromosome on chromosome number 21, and she has Down syndrome. And you know just explaining that generates conversations do you know, they're people in your family that have different genetic disorders, and we begin to talk about that. So, in addition to kind of extend that projects, I have the groups, each group will research a specific genetic disorder, and then they will have to in addition, develop an idea to raise community awareness about the disorder, or develop a program to increase individuals with disabilities quality of life. So it's kind of taken it a step further. And when they hear about you know that connection to my family, it creates an empathy and it creates a compassion. This project actually segwayed into, if you can go to the next slide, the theme for South Carolina DNA Day. So, South Carolina DNA Day, it was birthed from my partnership with the National Human Genome Research Institute. They reached out to several teachers across the nation to help curate resources for the 15 for 15 campaign. And out of that, we started South Carolina DNA Day and for this particular year. The theme was the wonder of science and we focused on genomics being all about kindness, acceptance and unity, because human beings regardless of race, sex, nationality, social economics, social economics. We're all 99.9% the same so here's a quick preview of our video from DNA Day and I can tell you more about it on the next slide. Hi everyone. There are so many exciting events happening in Fairfield County School District and the Fairfield Central High School Science Team will like to invite you out to our 2019 DNA Day celebration. Last year, Governor McMaster granted our proclamation request to establish April 25th as DNA Day in the state of South Carolina. On behalf of the House of Representatives and the South Carolina Senate, do hereby proclaim April 25th 2018 as South Carolina DNA Day. After the request was granted, we hosted a community family movie night and hundreds of students, families, faculty, staff and community members came out to celebrate. The event featured hands-on science experiments, games, food, prizes and more. This year, we're hosting our second annual DNA Day celebration, Friday, April 26th, 2019. Games and experiments start at 5 p.m. and the movie starts at 7.30 p.m. Save the day. We hope to see you there. So DNA Day is a huge celebration in my community. Everyone in the rural community comes together and we have host a family movie night. All elementary school students are invited to do science experiments on the lawn and a lot of them focus on genetics. So we do DNA extractions, DNA bracelets, all of these different things to facilitate learning during DNA Day. And I partnered or paired it with a movie night because in a rural community, we don't have access to a movie theater. So that was an incentive to bring the community out as well. And we also partnered it with a campaign for anti-bullying. So every student that comes in signs an anti-bullying pledge and they learn about the acceptance of differences by watching the movie Wonder. Any proceeds that we received from this event was actually donated to the Children's Craneo Facial Society for research in the area of Facial Genetic Disorders. The Twisted Science Crew, which is my science club, actually took ownership of this project and you can see them there. I'm a few of them there in the Choose Kind shirts. Those were also some of my advanced placement biology students. And in the bottom left-hand corner, you'll see that even our state legislator, one of our senators, he came out and actually read the proclamation and participated in the activities too. So this is something huge that happens throughout our community and it's going to be an ongoing tradition and the community learns about DNA. So teachers are encouraged to participate in their classroom each day or especially for DNA Day. And just the community comes out. We also curated resources for K3 all the way up to 12th grade for everyone to be able to participate in DNA Day. There are so many things about this, Shonda, that I love. The fact that you had students at all different ages, things for them to do. The fact that you tied it to the movie Wonder, which has such a great story and message. The fact that you're more advanced students took ownership of a lot of this. We talk a lot with our educators about how you frame a conversation around people with disorders, genetic or otherwise, and the importance of person first language, that it's an individual with Down syndrome, not a Down syndrome individual. Right. And we show them, we connect them to positive exposure by Rick Gdadi, which has all these beautiful images of the diversity of individuals with typical and atypical. If we're going to be able to have students, if we want students to be looking at genetic difference and tying that to phenotypic features, we need to have a conversation that takes us out of those people are different or there is something wrong. And this is such a nice way to begin to lay the foundation. And by talking about your own personal family connection, you open the door for other fam other students who have family members that are that are handy capable as well. Right. It's a beautiful event. And I'm so proud of my students and even some of the advanced students that lead the elementary school students in the strawberry DNA extraction experiments or leading the building the DNA model or they have sidewalk chalk to draw the structure, you know, you have little five year olds doing this, and it's sparking that interest. And I feel like that's opening the door for an entire community to pursue, you know, to see opportunities in stem in that manner. So that that's getting us closer to that bold prediction. I figure if we start them early, you know, having exposure to this research and this idea. By the time I get them in high school will be presenting the science for a project experiments. That's right, you are not expecting that these five year olds can actually, you know, coherently talk to you about Watson Crick base pairing, but all along the way, each of these little things these little touches provide. Oh, I'm really interested in this how do I learn more and if we can network those pieces together within communities so what I'm learning in school ties into after school activities you know camps the boys and girls club. 4h, you know future farmers all those different pieces build that broader network that each piece helps prep a student along the way. Yes. So, the last of our key pieces that we think needs to really happen is, how do we find engaging ways to to to teach this content. I think it starts with the fact that we love stories as a society. We love stories stories where there's a mystery where there's a puzzle to solve or a treasure to find, whether we're reading those ourselves or having somebody read them to us or we're watching them on the big screen or the small screen. And too often, scientists are not as good at telling stories, and I can say this because I gave my share of science presentations are the our moderator who's going to do our question and answer session Chris Gunter was a graduate student along with me. She saw plenty of presentations that I did that were not about storytelling and were about let me dump as much information on you as quickly as possible. And we have to come up as scientists with a better way to tell our stories to partner with educators and school systems to bring our expertise to the table, but to recognize, I'm not talking to my academic colleague. I'm talking to a group of 13 year olds or 16 year olds or 65 year olds, and how we tell those stories in different ways. We are accuracy and precision is important in the scientific field, and you get dinged and criticized if you're sloppy with your language or if you aren't precise where you need to be. When we talk with audiences about this. I'm not saying we should be sloppy with our language, but we need to dial back some of the the acronyms and the you know the $30 words and come back to the wonder of the science and I'm going to just show you one way that I've done this in the audience are probably going to roll your eyes and say that would never be something that I would do but I would just encourage you to think about this. I lead a public outreach program at Hudson Alpha called biotech 101 and 201 and it's open to the public. 101 reaches about 200 adults and students in the community every fall with four Tuesday nights of content around genetics and genomics. It's offered every February and it's a different topic every February, and I generally have about 300 300 people that come in person, and another 200 people that stream it live. And in 2020 right before everybody went into shut down for pandemic. We talked about the molecules of life and we taught carbohydrates and proteins and lipids and nucleic acid. And I was looking for a way to do this that was engaging and told it through story. And so we did this. We decided to do this through history stories so we took a different period in history, and each one of them we looked for some connection to one of the four macromolecules of life, and then we told that story. And I did it in costume. Each week I partnered with our local theater group and each week dressed up in whatever history window that I was talking about. And for example, with the first week we talked about lipids, and I talked about the importance of olives and olive oil to the formation of the civilizations around the Mediterranean, and the people in the room tasted olive oil and tasted butter and tasted margarine and we talked about the different chemical structures and then we dove in a little bit deeper. And it also gave us a chance to tie things that are not just scientific to the conversation so the week that I talked about carbohydrates, and it was Industrial Revolution England. I was able to talk about sugars and about starches and about the, the challenges with the sugar plantations, and with the cotton plantations and the enslavement of millions of individuals to run those, those enterprises. But I have some difficult but important conversations, science and history and storytelling and, and all of those different components. I'm not saying that you need to put on a wig and hose in order to have a conversation with people about the science that you do. Interesting hook. When you come up with ways to tell stories that people don't necessarily expect when you approach science in an unexpected way, and some of the most incredible science teachers that I know do this very thing in their classrooms that they tie it to something relevant a real world setting whether they're in costume or not. It answers though why would we ever have to know this or when is this ever been useful and I don't know Shonda if you. Do this kind of thing knowing you the way that I've gotten to know you I would imagine you've done something maybe not in costume, but something similar where you tie these to real world situations. Absolutely all I can tell you now is this is stolen first of all send me all the costumes I'll tell you what size, and I'll tell you that's good teaching. This is how I hook my students when I teach bio molecules of life I talk I use foods, of course, so bring in different types of foods and we also do like a mystery investigation one year I did who's go who stole the principal's iPhone, and the thief actually left different types of foods on the table where they were eating, and you know they had to figure out if it was a coach or the librarian or the custodial worker that was the culprit of taking the principal's iPhone. So this, this is great teaching and you have to have a hook, you have to have a story. That's how we real the students and that's how we real the community and when we connect it to something that they can relate to even if it's a song. So that went on to college, and we talked about some of the events genomics processes protein synthesis. They say oh we remember that activity that we did. And you know that that's neuroscience. When students when there's an experience that's created in the classroom or a learning experience, it goes into the long term memory consolidation it goes into your long term memory. So that's what we look for in education, especially K 12 to call students to remember these concepts so my kids do good on the test, especially they would do wonderful on this part if I dressed up so I'm ready to do this one. So one group that does this really really well as a group called PG ed, the personal genetics education project out of Harvard led by by Ting Wu and they created a whole set of these very contemporary story lines, and the training for educators to have these conversations and some of these are really challenging conversations about how cultures bump up against each other and about diversity and difference and they do a great job of equipping teachers to do this. I also invite scientists to engage with their broader community in these issues of science to talk to legislators and to consider speaking to the public at library events or in in communities of faith. They do a really nice job of, of kind of laying some of that groundwork. And then the last piece before we jump into boulder goals. Many of the things that I've talked about actually have been funded by NIH through a program called SIPA the science education partnership award, many of the different groups I've highlighted have SIPA grants that specifically allow us to take the cutting edge science and turn it into activities that are used in classrooms and in informal science settings and in museums and in, in videos. And if this is a field that you're interested in those of you that are watching, how do you take your science and turn it into something that has value and provides the appropriate scaffolding and tells the right stories. The SIPA community is something that you might want to take a look at. So that now brings us to before we move into the Q&A into Boulder. So, I love this, this proposal is bold, it's going to take a lot of a lot to get us to that point. But can you imagine something that actually takes us a little bit further. Yes, I absolutely can imagine something that takes us a little bit further and it reminds me of my experience I had the opportunity to design a school with a group of educators from around the nation and you know we had a specific STEM school. But what I see in the future. So similar to the career and technology education space where kids learn how to do welding and H facts and learn a trade. So they're learning right alongside the professional. I see school buildings or community hubs where the science lab is actually where students are learning. So, science, the classroom based instruction is happening there but it's also the laboratory where geneticists are performing their experiments and students just get to see that every day. They're able to communicate with the scientists and they have that partnership so that they are ready to perform some of these advanced experiments so that's bolder for me because you know they'll be right there beside the scientists so it's no excuse you know for this bold prediction not actually happening in that space. When we walk students down the hall to the science lab, it really is somebody's science lab. Yes, real. There's, there's so much about that that teaches students the process of science I think so many of our students still believe that science is a collection of facts that people already know. And you know, we've clearly seen through the last 15 months with coven 19 that we learned science on the fly and the science changes frequently, but but being able to witness people doing that science those closer relationships with scientists is valuable I think about how we could do some of that in virtual formats as well or maybe even with with virtual reality or augmented reality for students that are in rural settings that don't have access to that. All right, that that would be amazing is especially and then also you know some of the scientists if we think about how to get it to the students in a rural setting is that the experiment or research in a box. Scientists, however, whatever experimentation they're performing, if it's a way that they could just package it and mail it out to different schools so students can see it or carry something out a small experiment and have like an extension activity for them for students to carry out just to get their mind going and working and get them to understand you know what it is that's actually taking place inside of a lab. I think that'll be great. I think that's fantastic one of the one of the bolder things that I thought about. You know on Christmas Day there's the birding birdwatching activity and people can go outside and can count the birds that they see and then there's a database that they can contribute to it's really it's citizen science and it happens every Christmas day. I'd love to see more of that kind of work within the field of genetics and genomics so it's not just students doing these activities as part of their science fair project, but it is actually something that all the students in the class or all those that want to maybe it's an after school project actually can participate and they can see how they're contributing to the larger body of science I mean those are kind of the, the, how do we make this reach even larger. Yes, I love citizen science applications and I posted one on Twitter recently and my local news broadcaster it was the naturalist app. She picked it up and you know posted out to the world to say how her boys are participating in this scientific research so definitely figuring out you know how we can make, you know these applications you know so connecting it to the apps, where we can analyze to analyze DNA sequences and genomic sequences. How can we make this a part of citizen science. Maybe that's something we can do Neil. Maybe so I bet that's a collaboration that we could work on together most definitely which, you know, has been one of the nice parts. There are many nice parts about about being asked to do this seminar and getting to do this but getting to know you and these collaborations. It's been really lovely and it's an example of the kind of relationships that we need to cultivate even more of between people in labs and and people in classrooms. So with that, I will stop sharing, and then I'm going to turn it back over to Larry and then to Dr Chris Gunter for for our q amp a section. Thank you so much. Very nice to be inspired about teaching as well as in seeing inspirational teachers I want to just start the conversation because my guess is that you did inspire some of the people who are listening to get more involved in outreach. Kind of two questions one. What's the best way to learn how to be a better explainer teacher. If you're mainly focused in a lab setting you practice I can tell you I used to explain things with my grandparents were alive. That's where I tried to hone what I was doing I was a graduate student and I had to explain to them at the dinner table what I was doing. None of my grandparents graduated or even went to college. And so it was really a good exercise in trial and error and they were patient to listen. So that's one question and the second question is, if these scientists that are listening want to get involved in their local communities, which are diverse and all different things were all urban. Is there an easy way to do that that you can give people tips on. I would like to jump in on the first question about how to explain it and one strategy that I try to use with my students when we're covering something really complex and you know even strategies that I've taken on is how can you turn your research into a children's book or you know how can you make it so relatable that even a child can understand it and I know that might be challenging it might be different it might be a creative little project for you and your your science lab if there are any questions out there, but is it possible to turn your, your research into a children's book and actually one of my favorite scientists who actually explained her research in a manner that I could understand is a talk on Bonnie Bassler. Bonnie Bassler does on how bacteria communicate my kids love to watch that, just because you know it's saying oh you know these bacteria talking to each other, like we're talking on our cell phones with our friends. So thinking about ways like that. The analogies between what we do in everyday life and you know just breaking it down to the most simplistic way of turning into a children's book, because I taught an inclusion classes and inclusion classes included students of all different schools and those in special needs. So if I wanted to introduce a complex topic, say you know photosynthesis and I know we're not talking about that right now, you know with some of my students with disabilities. I'll have to start with the magic school bus get planted, you know, and then you know help build up you know from there for the other students so that comes to mind about you know the children's book so how can you break your research down and put it in that format. So the power of a good analogy goes far. Never underestimate an analogy to help people understand what you're doing. Larry you talked about that you talked to your grandparents, I think practice and practice with somebody that is going to give you feedback that says I understand what you're talking about or that doesn't make any sense to you know and and getting frustrated and figuring out okay how do I put this in an everyday and everyday type of format. Looking at science communication, there's some great literature out there about how you communicate science and the ways to communicate complex topics. That's a nice way to to maybe get an introduction to the field. Also, it's important I think to study what we know about misconception science that when people have misconceptions about concepts you can't just say that misconception is wrong. And here's why it's wrong, because what happens is they just sort of layer some of the information you just told them right over top of their misconception. You have to help them confront why their misconception is wrong. And then when their model no longer works for them, then they're willing to construct a new one. So this, I'm just going to tell you this is the way this is and you're thinking is wrong is going to get us nowhere. Your second question, if you're interested in how you engage with your community your your school system your library. How would you do this. I think you start having conversations with with those people who's the chair of the science department at your local at your local school, who leads summer programs at the library or the boys and girls club or summer camps. And then once you've started that discussion, you need to be really careful that you don't just say let me tell you all about this really cool research, and I want to talk about my research because what they may need is they may need something that is actually an activity around the most foundational piece of your research. Not let me just jump in with a 54 slide tutorial on the intricacies of my science. So there's got to be a really, you need to come to the table as a learner, recognizing that you know a lot about your field of science, but how you communicate that to whatever audience you're going to reach out to you probably don't know a whole lot about. And other people can help guide you and bring you to that table. I like what you mentioned about going in as a learner. One thing that I would also suggest is, you know, actually getting out and learning your community if the scientist has the opportunity to visit a classroom. And, you know, just do some observations and have conversations with the teachers of science and figure out if there is a need, sometimes those conversations can can lead to areas where they can fill in gaps and and, you know, perform and help where there's where there's a need. But for those of you that are listening live and in Northern Hemisphere, you know summer is about to come and school will be out soon. I know at least a lot of schools some of the teachers still are around and accessible and might be a good time to reach out to them as school closes. It's also a good time if you have a lab or research group. It's a great time to have teachers come into your groups, but to learn for a few months or just even observe for a few months. So, this more interaction between the academic world and the K through 12 world I think would be really helpful. I wanted to turn to the bold prediction for just a second before we go to the Q&As and, as I mentioned, you know our Institute and the NIH as a whole is really trying to make scientific data available, readily to almost anyone in some cases, especially thing where there's not human subjects concerns. And there are vast quantities of these data that are now being put up in the cloud and the cloud is obviously it's, it's not really magical just a computer somewhere. But the beauty of the cloud is that you don't need to download the data you don't need big compute resources at your school. What you need is a pipeline to be able to interact with the cloud and I know in our Institute. We are hoping to encourage as many people as possible to start to interact with our publicly available data which is available when I say publicly available not restrictions you don't have to apply to get access to it. We have human genetic and human genomic data sets whole genomes that are publicly available. I think one of the key points that Neil made is that connection is still weak, right? If you absolutely need to know Python in order to interact with the data, that's going to be a non-starter in middle school, at least for now. So where do you see the support coming to create those connectors? And John mentioned, and light went off, kids may not have a computer in the classroom, but they all have their own cell phones. I imagine cell phone apps that interact with these data sets could get used a lot. Is that a private sector thing or is that something academics can work on? Is it something our Institute should support more of? People creating those broken smiles because yes, we should put more money. I'm smiling because you are teaching in this rural area. The way that I had to do reviews was through like, you know, Instagram live or Facebook live for my students to review for a test or a quiz because they couldn't stay after school because it was an hour bus ride to get home. And if you miss the bus, you know, that's it. So creating an alternative way. So, I mean, I think it would be phenomenal for your institution to invest in creating these applications for students to use their phone to analyze these data sets. And, you know, I think apps, you know, cell phones, texting, TikTok, Twitter, all of those things. That's what we compete with education every day. So it makes it more accessible. That's how you connect it is culturally relevant because that's a part of our kids culture. You can't catch a high schooler. I mean middle schooler, maybe an elementary school kid depending on where you are without a cell phone. So definitely getting the scientists involved that the data scientists with the computer science and involved in developing these applications for kids to use and teachers to make it a part of our class. I would completely agree with what Shauna just said. I would also add that as we create these these tools, whatever they are, we need to give students and teachers some tutorials. Yeah, here's how you use this. And then here's a data set that I've partially managed and curated for you a sandbox for you to do some work in. Before I turn you loose on the bigger piece. I think that just creating the tools themselves are of limited value. It's unrealistic to assume, especially in all of our schools, but especially our rural schools that the one science teacher who is covering physical, chemical and biological sciences and probably leading a club and coaching something else is going to be able to figure out how to use even a super self explanatory app because they have so many other demands on their time. So how can we scaffold that so that the game, the app, the tutorial is doing a lot of that to at least help those students move to the next stage. What couldn't the video be like attached to or couldn't a video like utilizing your YouTube channel to say hey you know this is a new new application and you know here's how you use it. Here is an example of you know two different human sequences so you know I think that that would potentially be the scaffold that we need and that's also YouTube is also something that's accessible on the cell phone so Before we go to the Q&A I just want to both of you have mentioned a lot of resources for teachers. We will try, I think we can do this we will try to capture those from you. And then when this talk is posted on our website. In the comments section we can put some of those resources so the Louise Stark resource that PG Ed, I believe we're allowed to do capture material from your lecture, and provide those links for those of you that some of them went by too fast or you don't want to have to rewind, we will put a collection of Neil and Chandra approved genomics and science resources in the chat if we're about. I now want to turn it over to Chris, who has been monitoring the Q&A as they've come in, and will kind of translate through the Q&A and consolidate some of the multiple questions for you. Yeah, thank you Larry and we did have quite a number of people who wanted to thank you and tell you that they were inspired by your presentation so I want to pass that on to you. So one of the questions that we got relates to something that you were just talking about here near the end which is, are there any cool new technologies, including ones obviously that are not astronomically expensive that you see coming that will help teach genomics and biology. I think Chanda what you were just talking about with Instagram live and Facebook live in a way that's not a lot of us I think might think about doing that but in a way that that's a technology that has been. Absolutely well you know if you want to think about like that. I don't know if y'all have watched, but one of the latest crazes tiktok and teachers are taking over tiktok, and that might be a space for genomics researchers to tap into. And that would help with their storytelling and communication because you could practice and you know if people grass fit or grab a hold to it. You know that means that you're doing well or for something that you don't get a lot of likes or a lot of interactions with you know that might be telling you that you should potentially try to tweak your methods of sending out your message. I've seen several videos that communicate like the planets and their relationship to the sun photosynthesis so I think it's definitely a space to utilize social media, and I've had great success with that in my rural community with my students. I don't, I wouldn't say you know everybody is on this but you know it's definitely worth giving it a try. I think that we've just seen the enormous possibilities that come from virtual learning from the last year and a half. And I think we also have are going to see an explosion in better tools to help us communicate in a virtual format. One of the one of the things that we discovered when we took all of our programs virtually is that we were able to interact with educators and students around the globe that we would never have reached otherwise. So I think there is an opportunity there, provided that we aren't just communicating science in the historical way that we've done that with all of us staring at a zoom screen, but I think that isn't is something we're going to see more we're going to lose that kind of virtual opportunity. As, as communities create more and more, as the scientific community creates more and more tools for scientists for their colleagues to use. There's an incredible pathway for people that are thinking about how can I convert this or how can I modify this for the audience one step two steps below its original use. And there's something powerful about giving students access to the same tools that scientists use to make discoveries. We just have to think about the training wheels in the sandbox that goes along with that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's that's so many to think about. So, I think kind of you're leading into another question which a couple people ask different versions of but our director asked first while let him ask the question, which is that getting students excited about seeing micro swimming and pond water when examined or microscope is likely more straightforward and getting them excited about DNA sequence which is less visually thrilling. Eric, but anyway, what hooks to each of you use to get younger students just as excited about genomes and DNA sequence as they get about seeing microbes in pond water. I can talk about that because I kind of jumped into it but whenever it's something that's, you know, you can't see. I use what students like and my students love food so we use modeling so different types of candies different anything that they can eat it to. That's one of my methods so even Plato. I'm modeling when we're looking at genomic sequences construction paper like this is when you go back to arts and crafts. So I tell my students I said I know you thought that coloring was elementary school or middle school but no, we're pulling it out and we're using this to model. When I teach, even a topic as simple as, or as complex of course as protein synthesis, we do a draw to learn. So my students actually draw out the cell. They draw out the nucleus they draw DNA strand they draw it opening up in the mRNA strand pairing the base pairs and so on and so forth and we walk through the process. And that is how you know they actually get a visualization even though it might not be you know accurate or to scale, but it helps them grasp the concept when we have the modeling and you know using anything that's available in the classroom. Like I might not have access to probes I have to drive an hour to get those, but I do have some construction paper Plato color pencils markers and all of that in my classroom. So I start with that. We actually, you know, and Shonda talked about this as well. I would never underestimate the power of DNA extraction. And I know a lot of people are like we do that I've done that I've done thousands of those for the first time for a student doing that. That's very powerful to be able to talk about that you are able to see this thing that up until this point you haven't even be able to get your arms around and that you can do that with stuff that's probably in your kitchen or in your medicine cabinet. And you can expand that out if you want to make that more complex and give them a whole set of different soaps and different solutions to make their own extraction buffer or bring in the sushi plate from Publix and have them think about how they're going to extract from totally different kinds of foods. We also are creating a set of activities for elementary school kids around pets and the differences in different breeds of dogs, for example, and tying back what's genetic and what's environmental and, you know, younger kids. There's a connect there's an affinity with animals and there's so much variation within you know within whatever animal species you want to talk about. There's some of the ways that that we look to make those those connections. We also have students talk about themselves and look at themselves, we want to step into that carefully, because you want you never know what somebody's extended family pedigree is like and what their home situation is so we are really careful that we're not doing anything we're talking about if your parents look like this, and you look like this, you know, but I know a lot of people unintentionally stumble into that with the best of intentions. They just don't think about where that goes so so I mean everybody is interested in themselves and in why they are the way they are. And that's a great place to have conversation but you just want to do that really really sensitively not knowing what somebody's own story is. Absolutely. Very safe in that way. In fact, you know, I guess it would be a scaffolding thing to be able to then I assume the strawberry genome has been sequenced to extract DNA and then next year introduced them to searching the genomes for strawberries. I'd like to add one more thing to that. I had, I went to a presentation of two teachers that actually use there. They did the 23 and me analysis, and they use their results to actually create a problem based learning activity for their students to learn a little bit more about genomic sequencing. And I know that there's a lot of people that use it as well so it's, you know, could be potential there and I know that sites like that have created educated resources I meant to talk about that they have educated resources as well to take a deeper dive into genomics because they think about, you know, some of the shows that they watch about paternity or crime scene investigation and analysis. So really connecting it to something that's relevant. And I think some of those the products like 23 and me that we see the commercials for them all the time could be a potential gateway into exploring this as well. And that connection could take us all the way back we go back to what Eric's original question was might not be as thrilling as microbes and pond water, but you actually can identify the microbes that were in that pond water by the DNA fragments that they've left behind and so there's some forensic storytelling, you know, even though you can't see them now you can tell that they actually were there how can you identify, you know, lost civilizations or or or whatever. It was a much longer answer than you probably wanted. We get excited. I know Larry wants to ask you a question about curricula. I just, it was in the, it's my own experience in in our education branch as well as and it came in as a question as the one of the challenges centralized curricula or statewide curricula and trying to squeeze these under that, or is it just make sure you do the centralized curricula and then do this on top of it. How do you, how do you innovate when the school district says you got to cover this this this and this in this grade. And so it is a challenge. We're hoping just to give you a it's up we're hoping that we can develop some curriculum with some of the national organizations, but school districts still have to accept them so you have something creative. It's not in the centralized plan that comes in from the state or the school district. How do you work it in. I deal with that. I deal with that on a daily basis it's challenging I teach advanced placement biology which is a high stakes test course test of course and I teach biology one which is the state examination as well. And you know the kids get super interested in molecular biology the biotechnology aspect, but you know I was like this is the topic that we can only spend like three days on depending on how you pace it, but my extension to the community. Doing the community DNA day and doing the extension activities for the students or making it a on a passion project or ongoing project for students. That's the way that I have been able to fit it into the curriculum meaning is not has it's not necessarily a part of the structure curriculum every day that I teach but it I had to turn it into an ongoing project because it's one of my favorite topics now. I noticed the reason that I started going out to places to get training in these topics is because it was the most missed on our state examination as well. So they send us a report at the end of the year and it says students are struggling with these topics biotechnology molecular biology. And I was like okay, how can I get training to help the students and but it's because you know you only have. You're supposed to spend five days or three days on topic that would take much longer to teach so I had to get creative by figured out how I could extend it and make it something that students work on on their own or independently. But but that's a challenge for all teachers that teach these high stakes examinations because most of the time these topics are covered in courses where we have a state mandated test. I think you also look for ways that you can bring other mandated content into the story to reinforce that so it is an, you can use this in place of something rather than on top of something. But at the end of the day sometimes your best bet is to look for your informal science groups like your after school clubs your boys and girls club, you know summer programs and build curriculum, where you've got a little bit more breathing room to tell some of those stories. There are ways to do it in both cases, but it can be really challenging and you have to convince your educators, but you also have to convince in some cases, their administrators to spend time on something. And is that going to hurt their schools ability to have the kind of test scores that they need. Yeah, and I was told, honestly, I just speaking about the events that I do surrounding DNA day and everything like that to raise community awareness. I was told flat out at one point you know that this is something isn't something that people are participating in this isn't something that will work in our community. But you know, building a relationship with the community. You know I was happy to prove you know some of the naysayers wrong to see that it's something that the community actually invested in. And that was you know just some of the colleagues that just did not see something like that happening throughout our community so I think that you know it would take definitely having a year to the leadership of the superintendent. The principles of our schools to say hey, this is what we need to do and this is why it's important and connecting it to you know preparing students for college and careers after this. Like if we're we have a stem focus, you know, these are skills that they need to be able to be prepared for these jobs for the future. And that's what we want to do in our school. So thinking about an approach and our administrators and leadership that way was helpful for me. I think we're running out of time I think Chris is our timekeeper I want to end on a, you know, an up note not to struggle with the curriculum but the inspiration on defeating the curricula and extending it beyond where it is today. I just want to thank you both for doing what you do actually every day, not just the hour and a half you've spent with us and inspiring students everywhere I just want to add there's an extra power to this because students end up teaching their parents. A lot and you know in certainly I don't see any downside to having more people understand and learn science, be they formal students or informal lifelong students and you're both contributing a lot to that and I think the better understanding of genomics will come from not just the researchers lab benches but also from the general public as well. I really want to thank you for taking the time with us and, as I said, we will try to capture some of the resources this video will be archived should show up in about a week, I think on our website. And I'll give the last words to Neil and Chandra and then we will sign off. Chandra ladies first. I would just like to say that I'm, I'm grateful for this opportunity to present and share about the amazing genomics work that's taking place in my community. And you know, it doesn't matter where you are what what resources you have or, you know, if people try to prevent you for making something happen. It's impossible and my students and the teachers in my school the science team in my school, we work together to make this happen, and ultimately is going to be something that's beneficial for our students and for our community. We have several students, my principal contacted me at graduation. And I said, Miss Jefferson, you know, some of the freshmen that you taught in the sophomores and the seniors, many of our students decided to pursue careers and stem. And, you know, we're, I'm making an impact, you know, this community efforts are making an impact on our students, and I'm hopeful that it'll contribute to diversifying the STEM workforce and diversifying genomics and I know that that's a mission of the National Human Genome Research Institute so I'm happy to be contributing to that. I would say kudos to NHGRI for making one of their bold predictions about education and the importance of education and then giving Shonda and I the chance to talk about how that has to be scaffolded. And that's such an important part that often is left by the wayside and collaboration is going to be the key it's a relationship between scientists and educators in the classroom and curriculum crafters and science communicators it's going to take all of us to move from science to these broader, not just the education component but then the application and the uses of science in society. So it is a team, it is team science in every sense of the way. Yes. Thank you, Neil. Thank you, Shonda. Thank you out there for your attention and listening to the talk. I just want to say the next talk in the series is, I wrote it down somewhere. July 12 bold prediction number six will be tackled on July 12. I'm going to memorize otherwise I would say what both predictions six was but given the speakers I know it has to do probably with clinical translation. So thank you again for your attention. Thank you.