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The RIOS (for a Racially-just Inclusive Open STEM Education) Institute presents an interview podcast where Dr. Bryan Dewsbury of the Science Education And Society (SEAS) lab converses with individuals who do social justice work in science education and education in general. We hope people enjoy the conversation itself, and consider new ways in which education can be transformative whatever your situation may be.
Welcome back everybody. This is Episode 10. Thanks for sticking with us throughout a really amazing season. I just feel so blessed being able to be in the company of these wonderful guests that we've had. Really excited to close off this season with good friend and colleague of mine, Jackie Reeves-Pepin.
Bryan Dewsbury:Jackie is the well, I'm actually still getting used to seeing former. She was an executive director of the National Association for Biology Teachers. It's an organization that has a very, very rich history and it's one that I selfishly am very much in love with their mission and what they do and how they bring not just primary and second educators together but also college and universities. And we just had a rich discussion about NAPT itself, its role, past, present, future, but also Jackie and her just special flavor that she brought to the organization. I hope you enjoyed.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'll see you at the end. There's a lot I could start with with Jackie. We came to be friends and colleagues through her longtime running of the National Association for Biology Teachers. She always liked to tell a public lie that I blew her off when I first met her. I stand by the fact that that is not true.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Absolutely true, there are witnesses.
Bryan Dewsbury:But you you find a witness, you find a witness and bring them on this podcast. I know, you know, Jackie's story is so much more than just NABT, right? But that's maybe start a little bit before that Jackie. Tell us about the pre NABT life and then what brought you to NABT?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Okay, so I'm Jackie and I was a biologist for my undergrad and then went to school to become a research scientist. Decided I was not a research scientist, and decided to leave for a break that is now twenty five years later, it happens people, And went into industry working for a software company that was an international software company, AD Instruments, and worked to develop their education market in The United States. And so I was doing a lot of physiology. I was doing some neuroscience, a lot of teacher training, and I got to know specifically the community college teachers and the general biology teachers and the human anatomy and physiology teachers that were teaching for non majors or pre nursing, things like that.
Bryan Dewsbury:Were the community college teachers a big market for you or?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:It was. It it it was because a lot of sports physiology, applied health, they go through community college programs. And really just got to know the community. And, I was an NABT vendor before I came over, and, I was really lucky that I had a lot of people who trusted me in that community and they asked me to come and do some strategy for them and then offered me a job.
Bryan Dewsbury:Strategy like what?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:So they had been without an executive director for a long time and they and I had known their staff because I went to conference. I advertised in the American Biology Teacher, which is a great journal. If you're a biology educator, I'm going to plug it. And so I I I knew the community and the staff well, and I knew the incoming president because he was a customer of mine, Todd Carter. And so I had some ideas on how they could better communicate some of the, you know, non profits are businesses, they just don't make any money, and with somebody like me at the helm it's like no profit because I'm too busy giving everything away.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I had ideas, I'm an ideas person and they offered me a job that was, you know, huge pay cut and
Bryan Dewsbury:totally
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:something that I didn't know how to do. But they offered me support and they offered me a place to kind of use NABT as my own laboratory and it was invaluable. I learned so much, but I feel like I was able to do so much and I'm really proud of everything that we accomplished there.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah, yeah, let's dig into that a little bit because, you know, I'm a realist, right? Money does matter and you know mortgages don't pay themselves. And, you know, I'm not you're not the first person to take a job that paid less, but clearly there was something there that made the reduction in salary worth it. You kind of slightly hinted at it, but I mean you probably wouldn't have known that before you started the position right, mean you kind of got a sense of it, mean know you know
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I mean part of it is I was young and stupid. I had just gotten out
Bryan Dewsbury:you know And now you're just a little bit older?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Yes. I know. Don't make mistakes. It was I've and one of the reasons I was a terrible researcher, but great for my department, is sitting at a bench and doing experiments really did not it didn't light my fire. Talking about my experiments, talking about everybody else's experiments, talking about what the lab was doing and what student opportunities there were that gets me excited and so I was a, I was not a great graduate student but I was a great ambassador for our program and when and that I think is why you know I had started out as an application scientist at eighty instruments where I was just doing training and tech support because I'm a researcher and but I kept selling while I was there.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I was like, oh, this will work better for you or maybe you should try this. Oh, you wanna do this? We can add on this and they were all existing customers. They'd already bought stuff from eighty instruments but they bought more They love talking about science and NEBT talking about that community and talking about the great things that educators are doing in their classrooms, but also talking about the challenges that they're facing and ways that the scientific community and just the non scientific non scientific community can support and benefit from this work. I'm very enthusiastic about it, if you can't tell.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I mean, it's just what I really care about and so that it wasn't the money so much. It was about getting to talk about something that I love which is science. I'm a dork. I mean, I love it and it's exciting and I think everybody should, you know, nerd out about science. I mean, and the fact that they still do and the fact that Artemis and you know all these moon pictures are getting tears in people's eyes.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I mean that shows that there's something that actually unites us all. We might not understand what it is but it is I don't know. It's it's something that I think if you understand how science works, you can have a more equitable world.
Bryan Dewsbury:I feel like that could be a whole discussion on its own that could be two hours long. It could also be a good conference title, Science Unites Us All. I like the way you phrase it. See many good rabbit holes to run down with that. And I agree with you, but you you sort of kind
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:of slipped it in there. You regular conversations we
Bryan Dewsbury:don't sort of slipped it in there, but I just want to acknowledge you power in that. Let's talk about NABT a little bit. So people might know of it, They know the name. But I know offline you and I talked in the past about NABT is very interesting history. Take us back, I think New York City 1920s.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:It was 1938. It was post Scopes trial, which was John Scopes in Tennessee was charged with teaching evolution and it was it really captured the culture wars that were happening at the time. And we're seeing, you know, parallels of that today. But in, 1938, a group of teachers met in New York City, small group, less than 20, and they were talking about the state of secondary education, which is K 12, and what wasn't being taught, and it was evolution, and it was photosynthesis. And because photosynthesis apparently was super controversial, I don't know why it was
Bryan Dewsbury:You you don't you don't okay.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I actually went back and looked after our conversation. Still no idea. Oh. So I could still can't, you know, figure it out.
Bryan Dewsbury:So you mean you take light and make a sugar? Eggs. Well, I must get on this.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Mean, how do trees get so big? You know? So, you know, some mysteries, I guess, are not meant to be solved, but these, they really wanted to promote the accurate teaching of biology in America's public school system. And so NABT started out very small. They're like, we're going to make a club and have a journal.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:The American biology teacher in 1938. This is what they decided and what I think is so powerful about that is they reached, you know, this small group of teachers started to reach a critical mass and you have, you know, an eighty plus year organization. The journal is still considered one of the best for practitioners And NEBT's mission is to empower educators to provide the best biology and life science education for all students. And as the organization has evolved, pun completely intended, you know, that also means that we're talking about pedagogy and research on learning and best practices and teacher craft and all of these things to help teachers not just teach science but to teach better and so that their students are learning and so that is what we do. We're full k through 16, but really where NEBT is unique is it supports high school teachers, two year community, college instructors, and two and, four year college and university faculty, and they intersect in these ways and have this community of practice that really does big things because you have all of these college faculty who've never taken a methods course, They can learn from secondary teachers.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:You have secondary teachers who, are trying to understand how to apply new research or new science research, into their classrooms. So you have four year people who are experts in, you know, genetics and genomics and environmental science and climate science and all of the molecular biology, bioinformatics. So it really is one of those, you know, and to this day, we get all these people in a hotel and we make them talk to each other and
Bryan Dewsbury:And the conference room of the hotel.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:In the conference rooms, you know, in hotels and when you get people who are really passionate about what they do in a room together, they do big things and that it has always been an EBT spirit and it continues to this day and I'm really proud to have been part of that history and part of that legacy. And I'm also very excited to see what the next era of NABT looks like and how it supports biology teachers.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I'm going to get back to the kind of k 20 thing in a second, but I want to go back to
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:the history. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. Fair enough. But I want to get back to the historical piece and I mean I don't mean to charge you with being the biology teacher historian here but you were executive director for a long time so I'll get to pick on you right. So 1938 yes post SCOPES trial but this is pre Vannevar Bush NSF this is pre you know the normal school affiliation with higher ed and it was 60s and 70s where there was a an attempt to have normal school faculty teach professors how to teach this is pre sputnik right so NABT has borne witness to some pretty seismic changes in the higher ed landscape especially as it pertains to teaching so it may have been born out of this thing right this kind of political event But I'm curious for an organization like that to then witness all these other, by the way, very biology related things in eight decades. What do you know about how the organization has evolved to all of those different events?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:So I think one of the So I'll use kind of a story and then unpack it a little bit. So when NEBT was formed and one of its first logos was microscope because a microscope, you know, is hundreds of years old. In the fifties and the sixties, it changed its logo to a DNA strand.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Because we, you know, discovered what the double helix looks like, and that's another conversation about how that all happens. It went down. But I think one of the things that's been always really important about NEBT is that it is member led, and so you have people who really are curious, but also maybe a little anxious about what's happening in their classroom. And when that happens, the organization because it's small and nimble can move to meet that moment. And I think that one of the things that has also been really beneficial is we were formed out of the scopes trial, but when other evolution challenges occurred in the sixties with Epperson versus Arkansas and Kitzmiller versus Dover and then early two thousands, NEBT members were at the forefront of those discussions and we have seen this.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:We have
Bryan Dewsbury:I've seen been writing Amicus briefs and things like that.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:They're, you know, friend of the court, amicus briefs, the the teachers are members of NEBT. So Mhmm. We we are made aware of the, you know, the we need to put stickers in our text book movement. We need to give equal time to creationism or intelligent design or pro climate change organizations because they also exist. And the the the nice thing is is that NABT has seen all of these things before.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:We have and it can be really daunting when you're seeing arguments over and over and over again in the same kind of cultural context that are being applied to race and gender and vaccines and climate science and population and all of these, you know, all of these things. And it will biology teachers maybe, and maybe I'm overstating this, I think they understand that the science changes. Probably biologists understand that more than a lot of other people do is that when as we get new information, we have to change how we our approaches, our understandings, we need to construct new knowledge, and I think that that is one of the key things is that what we knew then versus what we know now and what we need to teach our students for so that they can be prepared to know what's happening in the future. It's just part of our ethos and it's, I think that it makes it really that peer to peer colleague to colleague learning that adaptive leadership that they have where they're if they work together for so long and you know a new crop of teachers comes in as another you know group retires and they just they they just move.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:They are not a static organization. They're very dynamic, but it's but the other thing is is they care about their students, and so they have this critical mass where they can make real changes on a national level. And in some cases international we have international members who come in and learn from any BT and then they and we learn more about what teaching is like in you know Denmark, South Africa, Australia, Mexico, UAE, we have the Ministry of Education since biology teachers every year to any BT to learn at the conference, it's India, you know, we, because at the heart of it teaching is about people and it's about the teachers and it's about the students. And when you care about people and you care about what you're doing, you're going to go on to be the best at it.
Bryan Dewsbury:Tell me a bit about the that 13 to 16 group. So when you said K 16, right, so the 16 group are the college faculty, right? Yes. Right. And I know sometimes the attitude from college faculty towards primary and secondary faculty isn't always the best, know, mean, NABT is a little bit of a self selecting crowd, many times I've been, certainly I've kind of witnessed that.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Oh, no. And if we're outside of it, absolutely witness it. It's
Bryan Dewsbury:unfortunate. I mean, I guess that could be its own discussion. But there is some kind of intentionality at NABT to really kind of cultivate that partnership make it useful and not just just college teaching faculty but also people like myself who do education research and stuff. Talk to me a little bit about that partnership. Were there sort of problems that you may have witnessed that as an organization you would deliberate in setting up structures to not have those problems persist or to increase the collaborative atmosphere because I think like as a natural thing I certainly haven't seen it gone well or that well outside of NABT.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Yeah, no and I love that you use the word intentionality instead of social engineering because that's usually what
Bryan Dewsbury:I know. One's illegal and
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:the other one sounds smart. Totally. I think, yes, to to go to your the and I mean, to be honest, NEBT was formed because a lot of science community, a lot of faculty were like, high school teachers aren't doing it right, you know, what are they teaching in high school? Here's a quick tip. If you wonder what they're teaching in high school, ask.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:You know, I mean, people love to talk about the work that they're doing. And you know, teachers at all levels get like none of the credit and all of the blame for what's happening in society. So, a lot of it is, you're not teaching evolution or photosynthesis which we still need to figure out why. Correctly, you know, we have to fix it. We have to tell you what to do and that absolutely is part of it.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Because it it is that you're doing it wrong. You're not doing it right. We need to help you.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And for, you know, decades, that's, you know, was actually true. It's a, you know, we do need your help. We do, we are not scientists, we're not trained in science. You know, that this emergence of these like dual majors where you're getting your teaching license while you're getting your bachelor's degree in science. Those are relatively new.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Those are you know, those did not exist in the 1930s. And so you you have, you know, Sputnik, and you have the the space race and this competition. And all of a sudden, you know, The US needs to become a really science forward, but a science dominant economy. And one of the things that then happened is there's this kind of shift in the, well, yes, you know, we might not know all of the science, but, you know, majors have been leaving the science programs, the STEM programs for decades. This is not new.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:You know, they're like, I would rather be, you know, anything else. Literally. You know, not and we we can say that because we're part of the community, so we can pick on each other. But then in the eighties, like, especially at NABT, it was interesting. I am like the biology education historian.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:So in the
Bryan Dewsbury:eighties You should write a book.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Oh, I should. The a bunch of people were going to NEBT and two year colleges were starting to go to NEBT because they're primarily teaching faculty. You know, they're instructors. They're not doing research. They're not getting NSF grants, you know, and the so they're starting to see each other more frequently.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:It's like, I teach it to two year college. I teach it to two year college. We, you know, both go to NEBT and so they form this really organic community within NABT that it was and it was the first one of the first sections. Well, was the first section at NABT because all of these people are teaching at the same level and they're wanting to network specifically with each other and there wasn't another place for them to do that and so, I I mean, I have no doubt that it happened in an airport bar somewhere and you know, all of these people just started seeing each other and building a community within the community and that was our first section. So, that was our first community of practice there.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And then, the four year community is like, well, we teach at four year and we're doing teacher prep and we're teaching general bio and you know what we're teaching is a little bit different and then AP was doing that and then the high school teachers are like well that's great but you know we are NEBT, we're like the majority and so you have this so NEBT has this so we have all these these communities within communities like a nesting doll where you can talk about the challenges of your own specific setting, but then you can talk about big challenges like evolution, vaccines, when the AIDS crisis happened, you know, how are we talking about AIDS? You need to talk about it and and the spread of infectious disease and all of a sudden everybody's becoming an expert on contact tracing and and then you go, you know, fast forward to the 2000s and there'd always been education research, especially in k 12 because the students can't escape, and you have all of these subjects.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know? Yeah. That's what you tell IRB. Right?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Yes. Yes. But all of a sudden, you have disciplinary based education research. So biology, education research, and research is great. Classroom scholarship is amazing.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:But if it doesn't get into the hands of practitioner, if it's not translated to them, what's the point?
Bryan Dewsbury:Have we done enough to do that?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Don't know. I think that there's before before the rise of the rise, the emergence, establishment of deeper as a separate field, It was a, I did this in this, my classroom, these are, you know, I had success, and it was kind of this, you know, sharing and there was very, you know, derivative and I you know I took what I learned at a conference or an article and used in my classroom, and then just kind of iterated off of it. Having some actual data and actual proof of concept and things that are replicatable is really important, and it does build on the knowledge base. What the issue is is sometimes, some people, I'm not going to name names because he's going to want me to name drop, but they like the they want their research to be used by students. They want or and and by other educators.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:They want to see student outcomes improve. They're real and some just like to do research for research based and the practitioner is not a they're building so they're you know they're building on a body of work versus the translational piece and then and as you translate it you use you lose fidelity some of the studies sometime And so there's, I think some tension there
Bryan Dewsbury:and maybe So, okay, I'm with you. Let me interrupt you a sec because I agree with what you're saying, but I almost don't want to give, I don't want to give the conversation a pass in the sense that from my vantage point, needs to be somebody's responsibility to manage that tension. Right. I mean, so I guess, right. You could sort of have a default approach where some of us choose to adjust the pursuit of knowledge thing and some of us really lean into the applied side and that is likely true for many fields.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:But
Bryan Dewsbury:I think with something as crucial to society right as its education system that can just be left just what the default might be. Feel that there needs to be some overarching body I don't know what it is that sort of
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I know,
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean we need a lot of applied things, we need a space where you are in direct contact with practitioners and there's a infrastructure around that and yes we're gonna have the next percent who is just gonna care about the next clicker.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And that's the thing is I mean and that I think is one of the biggest challenges that more recent challenges that I faced because I was at NABG really long time. Mhmm. And I'm not old.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:I'm old ish. You know? But is, you know, in in the long run, as much as I was like, this is exciting. I love this research. This is so, you know, again, I get really excited.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:But also my job as the executive director is to focus on the practitioner. It is empowering educators and if that work is not empowering the educator, have to like kind of put a blinder on.
Bryan Dewsbury:So a big space for you slash the organization was that lean inside. Yeah
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:exactly and the thing is I will not ever deprofessionalize an educator, you know faculty, if we're biology teachers and so to sit there and be like, well this research is, you know, so great and, you know, mind blowing, but it's not at your level. Yeah, I'm not here for that. Nope, not gonna happen on my watch, and so I do have a reputation because I'm very much just like great great our values like I'm kicked out of nurse sessions you know and because I'm like that's great but does what does why does it matter? Tell me why it matters. And and there's this other word that I hate that comes up a lot, and it also is very gatekeeping gatekeepy in the that's a word now.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:We're using it. You know, hashtag. But it's rigor. Mhmm. And so it's like, well, this research is up here and it's rigorous and it has, you know, we've done all of these things, and then that kind of makes it where the it creates a standard that's that needs to exist, but also the two year teacher who's got a lab in a closet, you know, that's where the Right.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Bit hood is, and they're also doing scholarship, but they don't have the ability to go for four years because it's a two year institution.
Bryan Dewsbury:It
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:it I don't want to minimize their contributions to the profession either. Right. And so it is attention and you know I try to then as many of the people who as many people as possible and and people go to NABT for one reason about their teaching practice and they go to Norst or Sabre for another research or for another reason and that's their research and I I wanna create that space where I'm like, we're we're gonna accept all of you. Come play with us. We're gonna allow you to show up and be every part of you.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:But I never want people to lose sight of the fact that those data points are people. They were actually humans and they matter and what we tell them and how we help prepare them for living in a very challenging world that matters.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah, yeah, well let me ask another question about Applied. So we kind of just talked about, you know, thanks for all of that detail, the sort of, research practitioner attention right and the role NABT plays in kind of encouraging a nice relationship there. The other applied piece of education research, and teaching is the public perception of what we do, right. And it's not lost on me that that you know what undergirded what the founding right was a public perception issue right pertaining to the teaching of a fairly fundamental biological concept right. Photosynthesis.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I'm not yeah, we're gonna definitely have to look that one up because I'm still mind blown. I don't want to act like the sky is falling. I don't want to act like we didn't make any progress but you know I'm sitting here I'm gonna totally date this podcast right recording on 04/21/2026 and we're having so much public misperception about things that we've been teaching for years, things that we've studied you know almost to the point of ad nauseam, I do feel, I mean this is just my view that we still haven't fully cracked that nut of having some public acceptance of these things beyond maybe those students you think who are trapped in the room, right? You know, is our job to make sure know 300,000,000 people get an A in intro bio? Know maybe not, maybe that's not the way to think about it I certainly worry that maybe the inability to have these semi technical conversations in plain ways that people can at least consider it to be a possibility is that it's probably was led to some of the accusations of indoctrination and you know is college worth I think there's some connections there and I think we have to access some responsibility there.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Oh I completely agree and I I think part of it too is secondary teachers, you know, those those k 12 teachers are more embedded in their communities than most faculty really are. They're they're embedded in their university. Mhmm. Anything like that even that's a baby. Yeah seriously I mean it's like they're you know the ivory tower there's a reason it's described that way and, and a lot of faculty aren't actually there, you know, you get your PhD, you go on your postdocs, you get your first tenure, you know, your tenure track position, probably a place that you're not from.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:You're not, you know, part of that community. You didn't grow up there. Yeah. And, you know, two year is unique in the fact that it is very regionalized, and they're and they're serving a lot of, you know, different learners not just, you know, kids who want to go to college they're serving, you know, military people who are trying to get prerequisites so that they are going to for your, they're doing apprentice programs there, you know, read, they're doing workforce training for new jobs in the area, they're doing their create their, they have a societal lift that that's a whole separate conversation on why that is unique. But one of the things that is a and and we see this a lot in the culture wars that are happening now is that if you're embedded in the community in the same way as, like, a k twelve teacher, You want to go to the grocery store and not have parents yell at you about teaching about climate change.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:You want to be able to go to your church. You want to be able to go to your kid's soccer game.
Bryan Dewsbury:So your same college faculty have that privilege.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:More protection. Yeah. You know, faculty, you know, you have unions and things like that. But you know, you have faculty synods, you have Well, okay, in some states faculty have
Bryan Dewsbury:Just to pick up on your point real quick about your K-twelve teachers, you know, I have two young kids in public school and very good teachers, very good schools, but it's always funny to me because they do live in the community we live in right and so sometimes I might see them at a restaurant or you know in another social environment and without them saying it out loud it is very clear that they are not trying to have a school conversation right. You get a smile, wave and you keep it
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:moving. Exactly, the what I'm not! We are
Bryan Dewsbury:all the clocks, you and your kid, you do you right?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Mean I had a you know, I my mom was a teacher and so yeah. Elementary school and it was it was the same thing where it was like we would refer to them by their first names when we saw them socially. But man, if I ever called like, Sherry smart Sherry at school, oh, I would be in so much trouble. Yeah. I mean, god forbid, these people have lives and, like, wanna do their own thing.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Mhmm. But it's also so so because of that, because you do run into these people a little bit more, you tend to, you know, high school teachers and and it's a it is a problem. They skirt away from more controversial topics because they don't want the drama. They don't want the problems. I mean, parents, can we talk about how evolved parents are at the secondary level?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And honestly, you know, higher ed is just now facing that with activist boards and regents and, you know, governors clearing out committees and things like that and appointing, you know, allies and things like that. A long time. A lot of universities just kind of ignored what was going on in K 12 level because it's like we're not attracting the students from those districts. We don't really care, we have this much and like
Bryan Dewsbury:I also they have an oversupply right for so many years it was spoiled because they always had more students
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:and it could have happened so
Bryan Dewsbury:now that the demographic cliff is happening and that because people are making different decisions now like now you have to you can't be as arrogant as you were in the past
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:exactly and it's you know for a long time it was we bring this to our institution
Bryan Dewsbury:right right
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And instead of we're bringing this to our communities. And that is shift is finally happening. But, you know, it for a long time, especially with the controversial topics, we would go to universities and we're like, we need you to go to school board meetings. We need you to be involved. We need you
Bryan Dewsbury:to response?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Some universities were really about great about it. Some were just like, no. This is a public education problem. And I'm like, yeah. But you have, you know, your partner, you might have kids in this system, there's this does impact you as well.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And so, I think that now, higher ed is finally kind of waking up to some of the challenges we've all been facing for like eighty years and they're like what do we do and you know it is a hey we know how to do this we've been doing this for a while we know how difficult it is, but to back to your other point, scientists talking to scientists is not as much fun as it could be, or it should be, you know, But, you know, it's one of the things that I always tell my members is, you know, have three things that you wanna talk about, like, your your elevator pitch. Because when people ask you what you do, oh, I I work with biology teachers or I teach biology. Oh, I hated that subject. You know? And then they move on to something else.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And it's for so long. It's like if you hear the mom across from you at the soccer practice or kid gymnastics or whatever, say, oh, I'm not vaccinating my kid because I I'm doing my own research. You're a science communicator. Right. You were
Bryan Dewsbury:In that moment you are. Yeah.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Yes. Exactly. And just like, yes, you know, maybe it'll be weird, but walk over and see, why aren't you doing that? I'm a biologist. You know during COVID I was did a whole lot of oh where did you get your degree in epidemiology from?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Tell me more about your graduate experience. So
Bryan Dewsbury:sorry finish and I'll ask you
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:another Because the thing is is as educators it is our job to communicate to everybody. Not just each other.
Bryan Dewsbury:So is that again to put you on NABT on the spot, is that a space where you either play an advocacy role in terms of encouraging slash pushing educators to have this skill set. Mean, you know, maybe not everybody's science community expert, but there perhaps needs to be some expectation that you can talk about this beyond just the departmental seminar. Oh
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:yes absolutely.
Bryan Dewsbury:And so what does advocacy look like? So
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:you know I mean it really depends on the kind of space that you're in but yes we bring in people who are science communicators all the time and not just, you know, we've brought in Jeff Corwin. We have brought in climate change educators. We have brought in the Henrietta Lacks family. It's not just talking about what happened with Henrietta Lacks, but also how the family has had to talk about that publicly. And what that actually means to them, because again, these are this is a person.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:This is somebody who's behind this.
Bryan Dewsbury:About professional development for educators?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Yes, we do. And right now, a lot of our shifting and our public statements and our, you know, informal training because we do do, you know, PD professional learning is about addressing misinformation. Because there's one thing about have a knowledge gap is you deal with that very differently than somebody who is being fed information or is accepting information or rejecting other information. And a lot of that is, you know, media literacy. It's not actually about science literacy.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:It's understanding how science works but also understanding why people would want to manipulate you, want you to believe certain things, you know, what are their motives? Who, you know, following the money? And data literacy is does this graph mean what you think it means? Are you fluent in that? And those are really important skills that are abs, you know, key to understanding science but also just key to living in a really society that is advancing so quickly that we cannot keep up.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And and that's the thing is is the practices and the research and you know what we know worked twenty years ago, we've got to have new tools. We have to understand and students are not coming in to your classroom as blank slates. Everybody knows this, but also you're not their only instructor. They're learning from a lot of different people. You know, they might love your class, but man, they don't like the reading because you are like full, they've got four of you, you know, and so it's understanding that they're balancing a lot of things that we that are we're blind to that these black boxes that are their lives and having them be able to communicate.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:One of the most encouraging things we saw during COVID was that when everybody went online, the the students were actually the most science literate people in the families, especially in, you know, first generation immigrant families, you know, and they're the ones who are communicating vaccine safety, sick, why you wanna wear a mask, things like that to their families are very powerful and we know this from public health is that, you know, children are their not they're not the knowledge keeper so much as they're the knowledge gainers that go back to their communities and they share this information with them and when when you think about it and you think, oh, this person sitting in front of me might be the closest thing to a scientist Mhmm. That their family, the people of their family barbecue will ever encounter
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:That's a huge responsibility.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And so you do want them to be able to communicate science better, but you also want them to be excited about it because every every person, every being is born curious.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And we we
Bryan Dewsbury:take that out. How do you not kill that? Exactly.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And I'm not saying, oh, let's, you know, nurture them and you know, all of these soft fuzzies. But if they can talk about what interests them, I guarantee you can find something that's scientific that can interest that is related to the scientific community and that endeavor. I'm sure you can find something for everybody.
Bryan Dewsbury:I know you're no longer mean, in fact, I don't even think in this conversation we said out loud that you were the former executive director.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Yes, correct.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I guess it's been what, four months or almost five months, well four months, right? Still feels very much.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:It's still new, I'm still consulting for them. For like the mafia you can never leave.
Bryan Dewsbury:You'll see your stuff man. All right anyway, So it was eighteen years? Eighteen years. And maybe you did this, what I'm about to ask you when you left, but I'll ask you anyway. Your last day as executive director, and let's say somebody asked you to leave a note for whoever was gonna come and take your place.
Bryan Dewsbury:What would that note say and why?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:That note would say trust what people are telling you. You know, in parentheses, being an executive director is not the same as being the the teacher.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:That's their expertise. And the second thing is to have fun. I mean, that these jobs are fun. They're hard, but have fun.
Bryan Dewsbury:Were there times you need to be reminded of both of those things separately?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Oh, not the not the trust the community aspect of it. I think that that coming in and not being an educator, I think actually helped me because I never needed to fill that chair. So we need to talk to, you know, classroom faculty. I'm like, I know a couple thousand. Who do you want?
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And I I part of, you know, social engineer matchmaker, you know, getting people into the rooms they needed to be. Nothing's worse than having somebody talk about education with when they don't have that. Their experiences as a student, not an educator. To have fun, yeah, though that one I needed reminders a lot because it's it's a lot of responsibility. People care deeply about their work and their students.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And the last you know, I'm like, the last few years have been frustrating, but, honestly, for there's always something that creeps up.
Bryan Dewsbury:And educators,
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:especially science anybody in the science community has been carrying a heavy weight because we should be celebrating amazing things. The, you know, a COVID vaccine that came out super quick, like Operation Warp Speed,
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean But that made that made some non scientists nervous though, right? Exactly. Back to the communication thing.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Exactly. But for somebody with my background as an immunologist, that was huge. That was something when it came out, I didn't cry because I'm like, oh COVID is cured because it's not. As an immunologist, this had been technology we've been talking about for like twenty years, and to actually see it and see it be effective and see this platform work. This is huge.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:This isn't just COVID. This is cancer. This is all sorts of autoimmune diseases. This is lupus. This is all sorts of things that, you know, and cystic fibrosis, you know, what we know about this now with CRISPR, all of the we should be celebrating all of these great technological advances, and we haven't been able to, and it feels really unfair.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Carrying that weight and trying to create that space where everybody can celebrate that, where they can be free to just let their, like, geek flag fly. It I feel still of energy, but it was it's absolutely worth it. And I have and I've been lucky that I can walk away from this position really proud of the work that I can do. I've made lots of friends and people I consider my family, and I have zero regrets.
Bryan Dewsbury:Well, the jury is out on a friends piece, but you said
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:mean we're not friends.
Bryan Dewsbury:You said trust the community, but I'm curious if as somebody who was not a teacher, if you had to get them to trust you, if there was a little bit of an arc there.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Oh absolutely, I think that to go in these spaces, have to be humble.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And you have and that goes back to the professionalism of teachers is Mhmm. We have this this feeling that anybody can be a teacher. And if you're a teacher because you weren't a successful scientist or you're never going to win the Nobel Prize. News flash, most people don't win the Nobel Prize. But teaching should not be, you know, your fallback position.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:There are and I think the thing that was really key for me is my job is not was never to tell you how to do your job.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:My job was to make it so that you could do your job and that you loved doing your job. And so that was me bringing in resources, me, you know, calling in favors, making sure that you had what you needed so you felt supported, and we used to have this phrase that it was practice what you teach. You go to the conference, you are a student, and then you can implement it that Monday when you get back. And and I think that and most teachers, you know, you don't wanna do the same thing over and over again. Your students are different.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Your class makeup change the demographics change from semester to semester. And so you all can't just sit back and say, well, I've always done it this way. So it's it was the buy in wasn't really that hard because I'm like, let's try something different. Mhmm. Let's do this.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:And you have a thousands of people who are like, yeah, let's do something different. It really was a match made in heaven.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'll just tell you, I'll close on this one that just on a personal note, you and I know it's pretty diverse landscape out there in terms of, you know, practitioner communities, biology education research communities, and they're good people, This is not anything personal, but I know in the early days of my faculty career, when I knew that my programme was going to be kind of unique and maybe a little bit different, maybe even nicely off putting to some people. Know, NFC was a place where I always went and it was very clear people never forgot the fun part of what we do, right, without sacrificing the rigorous piece. And so I know a big part of that was due to your leadership, just want to thank you personally. Thank
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:you, Brian. Thank you for letting me talk about some of my favorite people.
Bryan Dewsbury:Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the Rios Institute. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Thank you to my guest today, Jackie Reeves-Pepin, former executive director, National Association for Biology Teachers. Thank you for all of you who hopefully enjoyed episode, who learned something, felt moved, felt inspired. Thank you as always to Mister Sege Mamasai.
Bryan Dewsbury:Episode 10 brother. Actually episode 30 for you, really. It's been, it's it's been, been quite a run. When when trucking along fertile 30 whole episodes. When we started this, you were a freaking junior in college.
Bryan Dewsbury:This is true. Right? This is true. Alright. The time we by the time we wrap up this, you'll have your PhD.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'll keep you all posted about that. No, man. It's been it's been fun. It's been fun. Well, just grateful to see for your support and all you've done technically to to keep this podcast going.
Bryan Dewsbury:Glad to hear your voice on tape now. Feel like you're more part of the experience. I think we might have some special I'm not gonna I'm not gonna spoil it, but just we we always trying to we always trying to like find new ways to bring bring Sig Evan or bringing skill set in. I just want to say thank you again. I hope that the camaraderie and the spirit of of we can do all this stuff together that Jackie Reeves-Pepin brought to this episode and what the theme that came out of that.
Bryan Dewsbury:I hope as you head into your summer, this is what you think about when think about your classroom, think about your campus. I know these aren't easy times in higher education, but like every other time, I promise you we'll get through this together. Thank you so much and continue to be excellent to each other. We
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:have this this feeling that anybody can be a teacher. And, you know, if you're if you're a teacher because you aren't a successful scientist or you know, you're never gonna win the Nobel Prize. News flash, most people don't win
Bryan Dewsbury:the Nobel Prize.
Jaclyn Reeves-Pepin:Teaching should not be you know your fallback position there are and I think the thing that was really key for me is my job is not was never to tell you how to do your job. My job was to make it so that you could do your job and that you loved doing your job.