Carla Guarraia on Integrating Research into High School Science Teaching

Transcript:

>> Appreciation that learning should feel hard is something that I'm really understanding better. So teaching a neuroscience of learning class right now, the takeaway is that for your brain to learn, it should feel hard. >> Hi. Welcome to the Science Fair podcast. I'm your host, Susan Keatley. I'm a PhD chemist, writer, and I love talking to scientists. On the Science Fair podcast, I aim to bring you conversations with scientists doing fascinating, cutting edge work on all kinds of interesting phenomena, ranging from physics to chemistry, to biology, and even the nature of science itself. Tune in every Monday for a new episode. For each scientist we interview, first will release a mini-episode that connects what the scientist is doing with what's happening in the high school science classroom, and then the following week, the following interview. So come along. And tune in for some science fair. Hello listeners, welcome to another episode of the Science Fair podcast. Our guest today is high school science teacher, Carla Gariah. Carla is the chair of the Upper School Science Department at the Park School in Baltimore. She is also an advisor to the Beekeeping Club, the International Student-led Arctic Monitoring and Research Program, and the Hiking and Camping Club, and develops wellness programming. In January 2025, Carla received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. The award is the highest recognition that a K through 12 science technology engineering or mathematics teacher may receive for outstanding teaching in the United States. Only one teacher per state is recognized each year, making Carla the only teacher selected in all of Maryland, which is an extremely competitive region. Carla got her bachelor's degree in Biology, Chemistry, Interdisciplinary Studies from Loyola University in Maryland. And a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. And there are so many more interesting aspects of Carla's life, and we'll get to those in the conversation today. Carla, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited about being here and chatting. Also, we are recording at Manor Mill in Monkden, thank you to Angelo Otterbine for supporting the Science Fair Podcast and letting us record in this beautiful and always inspiring space. Also, thanks to Angelo, being here at Manor Mill has so inspiring and even thinking just about his children, Emilio and Isabella, and all the amazing things that I've been able to experience with them in the classroom. They're turning into really amazing adults too. It's always really special when I get to interview a science teacher and I think I would love to start with, before we even get into the teaching, what got you interested in a career in science and where there are experiences in childhood, in school, and in life that sparked and cultivated your interest in science. Thanks so much. That's a question that I really enjoyed thinking about because when I was quite young, I hoped to be a farmer at one point and a country music singer. Neither of those things have panned out, although basically my dad tried to encourage me to be open to lots of opportunities and I thought science at the time in high school was really challenging and I thought that might be something that I could study and never get bored, so that's more or less why I wanted to science. You mentioned that you had a summer internship at Merck. How did that come to be and did that contribute in any way to what you did after? For sure. Thanks also for bringing that up because it feels like a long time ago. I lived in the town near where Merck was headquartered and had the opportunity to do summer internships. I was applying for jobs strictly just because I needed to make some money and that opportunity came about and being surrounded by high level people who are thinking about science and doing interesting research projects at the time, the Human Genome Project, that was definitely transformative in seeing what was possible. So I enjoyed that a lot and I did get to do two years there and at the time could have maybe transitioned that into employment but I ended up going to grad school and said. And then at Loyola, did you know right away that you would major in science? How did that go? Sure. I went into Loyola, I was fortunate and I was running across country for Loyola so I got to go on to campus early. I knew that I was set up to be a biology major at the time and because you, when you do a fall sport in college, you get to go a week before everybody else and I have a work study appointment and so I was able to get a bit of like the best work study jobs and at the time my dad had also recommended, well why don't you see if you could work in the science department? And that really was incredible because I got to do all four years of my work study with the science department. I was preparing labs for teachers and seeing them as human beings, not just as professors as well. So that experience was great. I like that you say you got to see scientists as human beings. I don't know if you're familiar with the scientist and author Alan Lightman. No. But he just wrote a book called The Shape of Wonder. It came out in the fall but part of his mission is to humanize scientists in this book. So he has all these profiles of scientists and kind of, you know, just shows them as many of them took really unexpected paths and they have interesting hobbies and they're ultimately people, you know, not. I think sometimes people outside of science might view scientists as kind of like robotic and calculating and that's not really true. Exactly. Exactly. So then how did you decide to go for a PhD and what was pursuing a graduate degree like? We just have at Park School, some of our alums come back and one of their alums named Joy Haskins, who's a really incredible person. She stood in front of the assembly and was telling the students that when they used to have these assemblies and people would come back and talk about their path in science, they seemed to always present it like they knew that this would happen and she said it would make her really anxious and now she's at Columbia in med school. So obviously she's perfectly capable of having had a path from the beginning. But much like Joy, my path was not direct and it was not very intentional. I fell in by luck and good counsel from the people around me into science. So the PhD happened because I had skipped a class for the first time ever in college and I was a senior and I had never done this before as somewhat of a diligent student doing the things I should be doing and one of the professors asked me what do you do in after school? And I said I had a terrible job lined up that was low pay and no benefits and no future education opportunities. And he said, "Where are you doing?" Call these people. So he gave me the number at Towson and at UMBC and I called them and was able to go for the interview and I got into the UMBC graduate program and at the time it was not really an option that I knew was viable. I did not understand how people could afford to really go to grad school. So when they presented the letter that talked about when you go for a PhD program, you get your health benefits and you get a stipend. That was unbelievable to my family and I because the job I had lined up actually paid less than that without benefits and again through great counsel of my PhD advisor Phil Faribault he again saw me as a person. He treated me as a human while also teaching me so much. I had a wonderful experience in PhD at UMBC. Yeah, I mean I think that's something that's so different about graduate school and the humanities versus science. I think in science most labs won't take you on unless they have a way to fund you as a PhD student whereas I actually started my graduate program in anthropology and that is not the situation. At least it wasn't in the early 2000s in the social sciences and the humanities and so that's a really different set of considerations. You know, you have to think about am I taking out loans? Am I trying to get like a real job while I'm also pursuing my graduate degree? I luckily two years then switched over to the chemistry department where I was funded by something called the biotechnology training program but yeah, it's a very different outlook versus what you decide to major in. Great and I think even now with the funding cuts things are very difficult. Yes. For grad students again reflecting back on my past and how I ended up where I am, I am so lucky. After the PhD you went to do a postdoc. What was that like? So I jumped over. I stayed at UMBC but jumped over into their chemical engineering department and I worked again for a wonderful mentor, Jenny Leach, Dr. Jenny Leach and learned a little bit about the interface. I have always really enjoyed interdisciplinary sciences so the project I was working on, their chemical engineering department, they were working on developing matrices to grow cells in a 3D environment and imaging that and all the things involved in promoting cell growth in 3D. So my role there was to set up the cell culture and look at things from the biological perspective. And it was a great experience and I could foresee somewhat quickly though that the environment of academia for me just was not going to work. I was experiencing so much more actual physical pain just from sitting and reading and writing and it was not necessarily nearly as social of an experience which I know is not true for most grad students but for me it was so obvious that it was not the right path. So I was able to pivot to a brief stint in industry at that point and again did not feel like that path was right for me and my husband at the time had, he has an engineering degree, he was working at a defense contractor, he also knew that this path was not right for him. So he jumped to being a middle school teacher and I would continuously say I don't know who would want that job, who would want to work with students and I used to think students are smelly and it's a low-paying job and it's more work than one person can handle and it turns out that I am that person who wants that job. Isn't that amazing? It's unreal. Isn't it amazing that you have the chance to try it and see that? That is it. So I started my first experience with teaching was just teaching a yoga class at his middle school and just found so much joy in being with the students, seeing their interpretation of what I thought I knew being so different from my own but enjoying it more. So it seems obvious to me that that may be this would work. When I interviewed I first started at St. Paul School for Girls as a teacher and I interviewed there thinking there was no way I would want to teach at an all-girl school. It was as a student and thinking back to being a high school kid it seemed like a nightmare. But in fact the minute I got onto that campus I realized it was like stepping into like a nice comfy old pair of shoes that is made for you and again got great mentorship from at the time my mentor Terry Grant, he taught me a lot about teaching responsive teaching responsive classroom type pedagogy that came really naturally to him and I got off to a great start. Then I had a son and when my son was born I realized that he could not go to the school for girls and having learned a lot about the benefits of all female education for girls I was a bit reluctant to go until I found Park School. I had joined a seminar that they were offering on honey extraction from beekeeping that was earned by a colleague of mine and again that place exuded a joyfulness and authenticity that made it a place I really wanted to go. They did not hire me the first time I applied they hired somebody else and that person didn't work out in the timing then of my entry to Park School was hand in hand with this person they picked who on paper we could not look more like. We were even in our teaching interview we both taught the same exact topic of epigenetic. Oh my gosh, doesn't that funny? Like your simple lesson. Right. And so we were so much the same. And I did not have to reapply they hired me right on when I had decided to leave St. Paul's so it was amazing how I landed there and I've been super happy there for the last 10 years the while doing the wide wide variety of things they give me a lot of freedom to develop courses to make connections and philosophically their approach really aligns with just the way I move in the world. So it's been easy and hard and fun and rewarding and all the things that somebody would hope for their job. That's so wonderful. I can relate to some of what you were saying. So after my PhD I worked in management consulting and pharmaceuticals and it was a really terrible fit on like almost every level. So I left and I actually went to a science writing workshop in Arizona and I had always kind of wanted to do science writing when I was in graduate school but I think I was kind of enamored by this management consulting job but when that was over I thought I'm really going to do it now. I'm going to be a science writer. And then someone reached out there was like a three month opening at a private school in New York City. A maternity leave three months to teaching chemistry and I thought well why not? You know I always loved being a teaching assistant in graduate school. This is only three months and I was also I was terrified of the teenagers. I thought they're going to be so mean. This is going to be so difficult. I completely fell in love with them and at that time in my life after this crazy corporate job where I mean I never knew my schedule and that job I never knew when I would get home at night. I never knew if next week I'll be on a plane to Europe or to Michigan. Like I didn't know anything the the regularity and structure of teaching was exactly what I needed at that time. But I remember just reflecting on like I think until that point in my life I thought you should do the job where the subject matter is interesting to you and I realized there's so much more to a job. How active is it? What are the people like how much freedom do you have? How much for me like structure and regularity is there? But having taught in independent schools I came to appreciate what you're talking about which the freedom. Like if you have an idea most independent schools are going to let you run with it and develop it and that was such a fun cool thing to be able to do. That is so true and it often makes me think about how important it is for young people to take the opportunities just to shadow a job even for an hour. That it's not something in our culture that we really do and it would have benefited both of us on all of that. I think does it really seem really what it is we are getting into and we do get luckily we get the opportunity having had those experiences to coach kids to think through what their priorities really are and what are they really looking for in a job. So for example in my graduate work I was working with bacteria and yeast which on the surface is maybe not so interesting. However you can put it in the freezer and go home for the weekend. You can put it in the freezer and have a holiday with your family. Whereas if you're working for example in a mouse model or in a clinical trial you will work when they hit those dates that you need to collect on and it doesn't matter when that is and that constraint was not healthy for me either. Teaching again I thrive on routine and that routine is amazing. It is really good. For me so I taught for like nine and a half years but when I had my kids everything changed I sort of felt like I was doing the same job at work and at home and then that science writing bug kind of came alive again and so it was 2018 when I left teaching to write which was like terrifying but I'm grateful that I did it and it's nice too. I think with writing like the more life experience you have the better it goes so I think it was like kind of great making that switch once I was older. It is. I like the time that we get as adults to reflect on how unusual and how unexpected things were and how they really prepared us to be where we are. Yes. It's really useful. Yes. Even when parks school did not hire me and I worked in additional two years those two years at St. Paul School for Girls were amazing. We were able to host international students and help them set up their international for housing. We hosted Chinese students in our house and continued to do that for quite some time. Even after leaving the school and I learned to teach electives which now is something I do all the time so there was so much that happened in that two years that prepared me to be better for it and now being able to reflect on that is amazing. So getting to your job as science teacher, upper school, science department head and doing many clubs and electives you know and I think you've touched on this a bit but I'd like to just ask directly what is it that you enjoy most about your job? Listening to your podcast it's so fun to hear how people that you've had on the show will say what the favorite part of their job is is the people and so my colleagues are really brilliant and the kids they're so enthusiastic they're so full of potential and I so I love that and I really enjoy being able to teach multiple topics whereas I think as a postdoc and going into academia at the college level you're going to you're going to study one thing maybe for the rest of your life and of course people jump around and they do different things but truly I one semester I might be teaching of course where we're looking at gene expression using a colon cancer model and the next semester I might be teaching about integrative medicine or health disparities. So being able to teach across all different disciplines within science and connecting with kids through that that is definitely my favorite part of the job. I like that distinction you know of being able to teach multiple topics and subjects because I always think it's kind of artificial to say you know this is a problem in biology or this is a problem in physics because most scientific problems have aspects of all of the disciplines in them. And we educate at park we essentially re-did our curriculum years back and we noticed that we had done physics first which was really common at the time physics chemistry biology and we noticed some trends in who was taking the advanced courses and who was taking the non-advanced courses. courses and whether kids really were jumping up and it was really unusual to see girls jumping up. It was unusual to see minorities jumping up. It was also equally uncommon for students who were already in the Accelerate Attract to come down. And over the years, I had seen inconsistencies with who could be successful with different levels of content. So we broke that system and rebuilt it so that kids could get a foundation in interdisciplinary science in ninth and tenth grade. So in ninth grade now we teach physics, computer science and engineering and in tenth grade they get biology and chemistry with a great focus on data analysis and graphing and field experiences so that then when they're in the eleventh and twelfth grade, then they can go on to the more specialized courses in those five disciplines. But they still see that interdisciplinary connection all the time and all the teachers are moving knowing that that's been amazing too. I love that because some kids love biology and hate chemistry and vice versa so that means like your tenth grade year, you're not going to be like stuck in a science that you're hating because you that's how you lose people. They're like, well you know now I'm sixteen and I hated that last year so I guess science isn't for me, that's very interesting. We do hope that that system while kids complain a great deal when they're in it because it's really challenging. When they look back even as seniors, even as juniors, they're looking back and as college students reflecting back on the breadth of non measurable skills that they got through those experiences they really can see the value of it in it. And that is really cool. So I want to talk about how you integrate research into your teaching and I know you do this incredible project in the Arctic. Before we go there, I want to talk about two other classes where you've brought research and research skills, research processes into the curriculum. And you sent me this incredible table with courses and the course content and the research experiences. I wanted to talk about the plastics course and also the integrative medicine course. You can decide which one we talk about first if you know it makes sense. But something that you wrote to me which I loved is that you said I'm in my experiences truth equals facts equals numbers. So maybe you could talk about that a little bit and then start with one of these classes. So it's been a journey of course of shifting that very rigid perspective that only quantitative research is valuable. I really have seen the value of qualitative work, especially working with kids because what they say sometimes breaks through what an average number might be and things like that. So giving kids the experiences of taking numbers and data, they get to really make the connection that the something that they may be interested in. Oh, they can collect data on it. Oh, they can analyze the data. That is really helpful. In plastics class, the focus of that was helping them to think through multiple perspectives on the pros and cons of plastics. There's a book called the plastics paradox. It talks a lot about the benefits of plastics. And I knew that in society our default is like plastic is bad. But this gentleman who wrote the book was Christa Armett was the author. He worked in the plastics industry. So of course he had that perspective. And he really talked about the value of the ease of transporting plastic. It's lightweight. It's reusable. It's all these things. And kids and me were thinking about things. Okay, actually maybe this maybe we do need to take a harder look. Do life cycle analysis of products? How many times do we really have to use a cotton bag before it's value to the earth is seen? What are the other costs? Water wise, pesticide use, other things. So that class we did some debates on different things about plastics. And then each of those students had to join one of the four projects. And the four projects that I offered in that course were we used a bacteria that was discovered that can degrade pet plastic. Those kids were doing a molecular biology type experiment degrading plastic with that bacteria. We also had a group that was using wax worms to degrade plastic bags. Because there's been data and some studies that showed that they're really effective at doing this. And then I had a third group looking at microplastics. And they were using a die called Nile red that can make the microplastics more fluorescent under microscopy. And the last group was, oh, engineering a shredding device. They were building a shredder through an organization called precious plastics. They have open source plans and things like that for building shredders and extruders to manage their own plastics. So that's like obviously a lot. And probably one of the two really great things that happened through that class was number one, we could not get the system to work fast enough to degrade any measurable amount of pet. And this was really valuable because to teach a student how a negative result, why that's problematic, they understood it in a crystal clear way. Because they did not see any change in the amount of plastic that we put in. But was it a measuring technique? Was it a measuring problem? Did we not set the system up right? Was the bacteria, the plasma not induced at the right level? They really understood that no change did not mean necessarily no change. It could have meant that we did one of 100 things wrong. So that was cool. And that is also sad. The other thing that was great was that with the microscopy project and the dying of Nile Red, we consistently ran into a challenge that the seniors would run out of class time before they could really use image J, which is a software that you can use to analyze here of microscopy images. We really could never quite get good analysis before they would graduate. So it just moved to our projects to just move to slow in the kids' graduate. With AI, we could actually use Chatship-T to do some of that analysis. And of course this is a nightmare to many people. And there are obviously so many problems with students using AI. And there's a lot of obviously big conversation about this. But in terms of microscopy and image analysis, it was pretty powerful. Can you give me an example of like a particular prompt or like a topic that it was very helpful with? Sure. So a really simple one was that students were looking at different kinds of snack, like ready to go snack foods. They were taking samples and looking at the plastics and then we realized that the Nile Red confined to many different types of things that not only microplastics. So that they were getting some background noise with the fats that were maybe potato chips. They were analyzing. Then we realized that the die was staining plastics only on the surface. So then we started to think more about was the plastic actually coming from the packaging, not necessarily the product. So that was really interesting. Another group looked at fruit and they found it of course in all the fruit. But again, is it coming from the tool that you use? Is it coming from the surface of the fruit? And so we started to quantify the amounts that we were finding in different products. That was really cool. Well, I also love that you have now showed them a really productive way to use chat GPT. This is a great example of how it enhances your learning, helps you do something you couldn't have otherwise done. That is the truth and it is a sad truth. Yeah, but I think it's it's the reality of where we're going and I guess we ultimately want them to be savvy users of this. It is true and we do certainly have students who for ethical reasons don't want to use it. To honor that, we just I often will give choice. You can do a project where you can use it or you can't yeah, or you don't have to and I really respect their choice to say like, okay, this is built on tons of thevery of creative work and right. I get that. It is not great. But then maybe when we talk about the Arctic research, I can talk to you about how I use it in a different way there and how powerful it is. I'm thinking about what you're doing from the perspective of a teacher because I feel like everything you've just described, I would be so incredibly overwhelmed thinking as a teacher, how on earth will I get up to speed on this topic and then design these four kinds of projects and then evaluate them. How do you do this? It is true that for many teachers their comfort zone is to develop a course and to perfect it. Okay, that it runs somewhat autonomously. Those teachers get amazing reviews for their organization. Obviously work really hard to be organized, but about three years into teaching a course, I just get a little work with it and I kind of think that it's a good idea for me to run with just who I am and I've found that I'm most successful when I'm true to that. So I tend to design a lot of courses. I enjoy the learning, I enjoy reading the primary literature, I enjoy connecting at the kids, I enjoy hearing what kids are interested in and developing courses that they will care about, but it is true that obviously what's fundamentally important in teaching is assessment. So yes, I can teach them a lot of things, but if I'm not assessing that in a way that's clear and fair, then no one really will have a great experience. So I do often think a lot about, okay, how will I assess this project? How will it look on paper? How will kids know what to do and what kinds of students need what kind of supports in order to be successful doing a project like that? So the plastics was run as a more advanced course. But again, like kids who get the opportunity to do authentic work tend to run with it. And when they have choice built in, they can run with it. Is it feasible in more constrained systems? Definitely not. It might be way beyond what is possible in a more constrained system. So again, consistently grateful that I'm in a place that lets me do a lot of different things. It sounds like maybe you begin, but then you kind of let the course become based on where the students bring it. It is true. The competencies that they end up having and they're better at, we don't have to necessarily spend more time on that. I can adjust and pivot, but the competencies that they struggle with, more like reaching out to mentors, doing those projects and plastics. That was a part of the project, because they had to find people who studied these things and reach out to them. That was more challenging to them than I thought. And yet, that's like how you're trying to challenge them. That was really important. So you've spent a little more time doing that and talking through that process. And again, that flexibility is worthwhile. But it doesn't show up in traditional measures. So that is a challenge. How do we value those things without having some measurement on it for kids? It's pretty cool. And I would like to talk about the integrative medicine class research, where I think you said a student did an independent study hypothesizing that yoga or meditation would improve heart rate variability in black female teenagers. I would love to hear more about that. That is a project that was like the right project with the right person. So Tyler Johnson is also in med school right now. And when I open the door and if she is my doctor, I will be relieved. So what she learned in integrative medicine was that we have sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves and that the measurement of the ratio of those things can be done through heart rate variability. So as we, for example, in Hale, that's a sympathetic response. That sympathetic response increases our heart rate a little bit. And that when you exhale, that's a parasympathetic response and your heart rate should slow down a little bit. The difference between those numbers is what heart rate variability fundamentally is. And we have found a tool that could do that using cell phone. Yeah. And that was amazing. What was not amazing was that at the time the technology and cell phone cameras was actually not able to measure through dark pigmented skin. And so I could believe that I taught health disparities and literally picked a tool that would not work. Like an Apple watch or like a sensor on your body. Yeah. And this was just actually the camera on herself. Oh, wow. And what's kind of cool is now the cameras are better and they can measure through all pigmented skin. But we thought that was ironic that I picked up. Now you can use a used a polar heart rate monitor. So that's the way we could get around that. And she was interested in that and obviously had a great interest in human physiology. So she took that project. We went through everything from how do you set up ethical study where people are getting informed consent, participating, they're filling out waivers, they're doing all the things. And she then would give them meditation or yoga experiences and seeing if there was a change. And this short answer was that there's not a change. Oh, wow. Again, that negative result then causes you to ask a lot of questions. And as a high school teacher, my salary doesn't depend on whether we can get a publishable result, which is amazing. Yes. Because then that student is taking that information and that experience and just thinking longer term. What does it mean to do a study that's only over a period of weeks when what you're talking about is a measurement that may take several years of practicing yoga, doing meditation to see it difference. So that was kind of what our takeaway was. That the analysis was really fun and she was an easy student. That is so interesting. And you think about scientists who are in these positions where they're constantly writing grants and like, what is the time horizon, they're pressured to deliver results in. What kinds of studies then are not done because they might take longer. Right. And it's this is kind of how the evolution of my courses go. So in that integrative medicine study, I realized that this measurement took longer, learned a lot more about public health than how there are people who do those longer studies and then for the help of the securities class. Learning how new people study these, answer these questions. And kids also really found that fascinating. But I think what I'm taking away from the description of the plastics class and then the integrative medicine class is that in order to embed research in your teaching, you're really giving the students agency, allowing for them to run with things like it's not just a teacher mapping it all out six months in advance. Like this is really like an interaction. That is true and it is in fact something that does make the work a lot. It's a lot of work. But for me, that's really, it's good work. It's fun work. It feels sometimes like it's a hobby rather than a job. That's so nice. So it is very, very lucky. Now I want to do a deeper dive into the Arctic program that you lead. And you are looking at bacterial profiles in different areas over time. So can you tell us more about the research question and then how you are doing this with the students? And if you'd like to, you can kind of talk about the inspiration for the project as well. Going back to the beginning of the project, my dear friend and colleague Julie Rogers started this program over 20 years ago. She wanted to take kids someplace they could never go on their own and realize that to travel to certain places within the Arctic, you can only go for your researcher. So she started thinking through with a colleague Brian Brook in Saskatchewan. They started thinking through, what can we measure and how can the kids be involved in this research? When you have a large team of teenagers, is it really important when traveling to keep them busy and tired? So they designed a study where the students would be probing the permafrost with like a physical metal rod to shove this big rod into the ground. And you measure how far down the permafrost is. And this is a great technique, super fun and it's perfect thing for teenagers because it can be really, really difficult. And also they had an interest in looking at the cover on top of the ground. So they were looking at, they go to the species level for most of the plants that they study and they are essentially looking to see if they can make predictions about how deep the permafrost is based on the plant cover on the top. Very challenging thing to do. So at the time I had been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and I had to shift away from sports. And sports was basically my identity. And fortunately with a strong yoga practice and meditation, that transition was not terrible for me. But I did have to stop coaching and I had to step away from sports for a bit. And Julie took the opportunity just pass. Can you run some genomic stuff with the Arctic love? We had a researcher from Hopkins, Jocelyn Derisierio. She set up a project that her son went to the Arctic and she did the first study pilot study looking at the microbiome of the active layer, which is like the dirt on top. And I thought, yeah sure, I'll help out. And from there the project has evolved into one where we're primarily using quantitative PCR. And by using quantitative PCR, the data is a little bit easier for the average student to manage. And for me to manage a microbiome data set, you really have to have expertise in coding to manage something so big. And I did not have that. That's where Trash UBT comes in and it's been really helpful. But basically what we do is we get samples all across different habitats in the Arctic. And we bring them back to the US with we have permitting to do that. And on Monday nights, we meet as a club and students extract the DNA. So they're learning those lab techniques on how to use the micro-play pattern, how to use the extra they have sterile technique. What they're doing, we extract the DNA. And then they learn how to set up the quantitative PCR, what it is, how does it work. This is really challenging when the students are in ninth grade and they haven't really learned about DNA or DNA replication yet. But they can do it. And from there, then we're looking at some analyses looking at relationships between the permafrost depth and the different profiles of bacteria, the plant cover and profiles of bacteria. And at the end of the day, I've been really fortunate that a dear friend of mine, Abigail Flour, is a data scientist and she has her PhD in physics and she was a teacher that I worked with at St. Paul's. She gave me several days of her time and taught me how to use AI to analyze my spread sheets and work with my data. So she helped me set the sheets up and now I can teach kids that too. How do you set up a sheet so that it's machine readable? And of course, she will always check the Python code for us and walk us through questions that our data might bring. And through that, we've actually been able to come close to now having like somewhat of an interesting finding about how the microbiome you would predict it with a look and how what we're seeing is a little bit different than that. And again, without the AI, the-- with the data just be too big and unwieldy, it would just take too long. - So we have a data analysis group and they spend a lot of their time working on the other data, so like vegetation analysis or the permafrost measurements. So as a microbiome group, basically we were starting to learn Python, which is like a whole thing. And Abby was teaching me how to begin to do that and use these data. And when AI came out, I was like, "Fight, gosh." I felt like I could have done this without that tool. - Right. And now it's at the kids' fingertips. So they can take the preliminary data that I might present and start to ask their own questions, start to generate different data sets, start to generate different visuals. And it has been transformative for my personal work. - Well, I also love how you say that doing the PCR, it can be challenging for ninth graders who haven't learned about DNA yet. But at the same time, I remember learning about these things in 10th grade and like when you're learning them from a book and you're not in the lab, it's just so incredibly difficult to realize like, what does this even look like? And then once I got into a lab, the chemistry lab I worked in and graduate school was like a genomics lab. And it was just like a little bit late. It was like, "Oh, okay." That's what it looks like. That's what the size of the tubes is. The machine is like, so I think it's almost interesting to kind of have them start with the tasks and the mechanics. So then when they're learning the concepts that are more textbook-y or luxury, they are like, "Wait, I know what that looks like." - And why is it important? - Yeah. - So it is true and there is in the past research that suggests that engaging in a problem first and then unpacking it can be more engaging. And I like to present it both ways so that I'm not saying I don't trust that work, but it does seem that you want to give it the information both ways. So we will do the technique and in the club, I'll teach them the background so that no matter which way they're coming in more interested, they can hopefully come away having learned something and why it matters. - And you mentioned that you have a paper coming up. Can you reveal anything about the findings? - Sure. So every year I say, "I'm not going up to the Arctic until I publish this paper, but every year then the data gets more and more weird." So the biggest challenge with working with teenagers through this work is that it moves glacially slow compared to what an academic lab can do. So the findings suggest that the habitat type underground is much more important than the vegetation on top. So I would expect that habitats that have similar characteristics in vegetation cover would have looked the same, but in fact, the vegetation can be quite different and the profiles might still look the same. The practical application of that for the kids is they're thinking about carbon cycles. They're thinking about nitrogen cycles. They're thinking about methane emissions. So we're starting to think through those things. One of the challenges that I hit last year, and actually right now we're at Manor Mill in Sparks. - Yes, in Huntsend. - And in Huntsend. I'm not a monk to be here. And the owners of Manor Mill, Angelo Audubi, son, Emilio was working with me last year doing an independent study. And Emilio ran quite a few tests and we collected quite a bit of data. And none of it was making sense at the time. My primers that I'm using for this reaction, so the DNA that I'm using to drive the reaction had actually, I think, degraded. So that was nothing I had ever encountered in my research life because you don't ever take so long to do a project. You would not have primers for 10 years. You wouldn't necessarily have things moving so slow, technology changing. Like the kits that we're using to do the extraction, they got updated. And so having to control for all these changes over 10 years is really hard. So now unfortunately we're having to go back and reevaluate at what point did the data start to change? Based on what I believe to be the primary degradation. And so I'm doing that right now. I still think that the findings will be useful. I think there's still a lot to learn in molecular ecology about what do the bacterial profiles mean? What is the functional utility of knowing that information that microbial ecology is not? Well, ecology is not quite there. And it's not quite there. Which also makes it a little bit challenging because kids want to know. So a lot of the specter is off the ground. And then we spend some time looking at each bacterial type that we're looking at and understanding what is its role in ecology. Why does it matter? Then what's great is that the kits are in ecology costs is still. So they're seeing that connection between the multiple disciplines of biology. Which is really fun. Well, and these are the exact questions that microbiome scientists are grappling with. I just wrote a piece about a scientist named Rob Knight who has developed all kinds of software for studying the microbiome. But when I was interviewing people for the article, one of his first graduates to actually, who's a professor in Colorado said, you know, we now know all of this stuff about the microbiome composition of parts of the human body. But we still don't know what to tell people. Like that's sort of what we need to do now. But I think that's happening too in the environment. Like we're still trying to understand how is it resulting in something that has an impact and what can we do about it. So I think it's great that the students are seeing that. It's so true. And in fact, one of the benefits again of being able to do this over such a long time period is that we have data over time. And that's not so common for environmental microbiology. We have data on the plant cover. We have data on the active layer thickness, which is like the ground before you hit the pomephrost. Those relationships have not typically been shown. I also love that you, I think for any teachers listening to this, it's important to know the joy and also the reality of working with teenagers on something that it might be slower. So you're going to have to take that into account when you're thinking about your lab supplies, your tools. It's so true. And a lot of the times when we're collecting data, the students will say, "This is great. We'll do it. We'll publish it." And when they go to the writing part, they realize that writing a scientific paper is not writing a lab report. They need to have read every paper in the field. And so most of my independent study students, like Emilio Audervaim, get to see that. And they realize, "Oh wow, any given scientific field is really deep." And it's going to take a lot to get a comprehensive understanding of the field before I can say anything about what my little study did. So that's opening sentence of an article that has 15 references. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think that's also really important and valuable takeaway for these kids because they're going to college and grad school and med school and law school to do these things. Now they, they're going in with open eyes. You are going to have to run important. Well, I hope you share the paper when it gets published. I would love to see it. So I think I want to move on to our last question, which you kind of alluded to earlier when you were talking about shadowing. But what is your advice for high school students who like science? How can they get more involved, learn more about it? Given that that's kind of what I think about all the time, I would certainly recommend that students try to do their best. And even though that seems like it's nothing kind of statement, appreciation that learning should feel hard is something that I'm really understanding better. And teaching a neuroscience of learning class right now, the takeaway is that for your brain to learn, it should feel hard. I would encourage kids to be patient to keep trying to be themselves, connect with their learning with their life so that the learning feels meaningful. And of course, my most important piece of advice for a teenager who's interested in science is to make sure that they're getting enough sleep integrated medicine, one of the units is about sleep in neuroscience learning. We're talking about sleep. And one of the easiest things that you can do to be a better student is to get a good night's sleep after you've learned something hard and to get a good night's sleep before you are learning something hard. So, falling into the, what can be a real cycle of sleep deprivation and working harder and working more. It's numbered, Michelle. And so, looking more into the science of sleep and trying to really keep up with those habits of good sleep hygiene, go to bed 30 minutes earlier, usually my number one piece of advice. Say you're going to stay motivated, do lots of different things, don't feel like you have to do things just for the college process. Because being your authentic self is going to more likely make you more successful. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Carla. Thank you. It's been really fun thinking about these things together. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Science Fair. Please rate and review the podcast on the podcast player of your choice. Also, please fill out a listener feedback form. You can find a link to the form in the show notes of this podcast or on the Science for Podcast website. Also linked to in the show notes. Finally, we are looking for episode sponsors. sponsors. If you have any questions, please leave a comment. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode in exchange for us giving airtime to your favorite cause, send an email to thesciencefairpodcast@gmail.com with the word sponsor in the subject line. 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