Gary (00:06.537)
Welcome to another episode of MLS 2030. And of course, MLS stands for Medical Laboratory Science in the year 2030. I'm your host, Gary Stocker. And we use these podcasts to talk about the career of medical laboratory science and the fact that 70% of all diagnosis and treatments are associated with the work done by medical laboratory scientists. Today, we are pleased to have with us a high school science teacher from Timberland High School in St. Charles County, Missouri.

And please welcome Teresa Courtenire. Teresa, welcome.

Theresa Cordonier (00:39.234)
Thank you so much for having me, Gary.

Gary (00:41.481)
And I got to tell you right off the top that Teresa has been impressive and not only that the science that she teaches her students, but in the above and beyond the call of duty work she does and helping them make career decisions, make decisions about their majors in college and help when we're done with our podcast today that you'll have gained an additional perspective on medical laboratory science, but more importantly, what to think about as either as a parent or even as a high school student, as you consider

Science careers in general, a little bit more specifically, allied health careers, nursing, medical, laboratory, pharmacy, radiology, physical therapy, those, and in particular, medical laboratory science. So, Teresa, just so the audience knows, share with us your background, your education, and your experience.

Theresa Cordonier (01:29.946)
So I graduated high school 2001 and then went to Lindenwood University in St. Charles. There I knew I wanted to do science, but I didn't know what I wanted to do because I didn't get the background in high school that I'm giving my students.

Um, so I was taking just a bunch of science classes and that was about it. And my sophomore year, my dad was like, why don't you try education? Um, so I took the intro to education class, um, got to visit a middle school science classroom and fell in love, um, with education and it just kind of blossomed from there. Um, when I graduated, um, college at Lindenwood, I

got a job in a very small town, Knob Noster, and I taught there for three years, where I got my master's in secondary administration at University of Central Missouri there in Warrensburg, and then moved back to St. Charles in 2009, where I started teaching at Timberland High School, and I've been there ever since.

And I have probably taught every single class they have available except for like one or two. So I have taught it all when it comes to science.

Gary (02:58.785)
So you are a diverse science educator. And so, Teresa, what grades do you teach at Timberland High School?

Theresa Cordonier (03:01.522)
Yes.

Theresa Cordonier (03:06.446)
So I actually teach ninth through 12th grade just because of the classes I teach.

Gary (03:14.429)
And for the parents that are listening to this podcast, what kind of guidance can you give to them relative to their children thinking about in general a science career, or more specifically a medical laboratory science or even other allied health career pursuit?

Theresa Cordonier (03:31.258)
I would say if Project Lead the Way Biomed is offered at their school, they should highly consider their child going into that. Just because not only medical lab science, but they introduce students to all different types of careers in the medical field. And so it just really gives them the students insight into.

what options there are besides just nursing and being a doctor. I also recommend that with, tied to that Project Lead the Way program, if they have a HOSA club, after school club, that is being ran at their school, I highly recommend they join that as well. HOSA is Future Health Professionals, and it's a student-led club.

where they do blood drives at school, other like medical related activities. But one of the things that like our club specifically does is we have HOSA talks after school where we bring in medical professionals just to like talk about their career and what they do and how they got there, just again to give the students more insight into the different fields out there.

Gary (04:55.873)
Interesting, I'm actually doing one of those events for HOSA this Friday there in St. and St. Charles. So that'll be interesting. So, Teresa, I give you and your teacher colleagues a ton of credit. Many, many years ago, I was a, not called adjunct, but a part-time fill-in substitute. I was a substitute teacher in some high schools in the St. Louis County region. And it was a challenge. And just share with the listeners.

Theresa Cordonier (05:00.775)
Yay!

Theresa Cordonier (05:20.108)
Yes.

Gary (05:22.725)
What do you enjoy most about teaching science, in particular to high school students?

Theresa Cordonier (05:28.482)
I, well, for one, I love the material that I'm teaching. So obviously that's important because if you love the material you're teaching, you're gonna get excited, which is going to always translate to the students getting excited. So that is definitely the number one thing. But two, what I really love is when I am teaching them a hard concept,

and they're not getting it and you're trying different methods to get them to understand and then finally like that light bulb just turns on and they're like oh my gosh I got it and you're just like so excited for them because they got such this hard concept and they figured it out and they did the work and that's always been rewarding for me. Yeah.

Gary (06:21.653)
Well, cool, very cool. And of course, you and I work together mostly on two, with two different organizations. And I want you to talk about both of those and just kind of share the experiences you've had as the high school science teacher there at Timberland, as a high school science teacher at Timberland about an organization called Project Lead the Way.

Theresa Cordonier (06:29.442)
Yes.

Theresa Cordonier (06:40.67)
Yes. So Project Lead the Way is actually like a national curriculum that's available to high schools like across the United States and they have different pathways. And when I say pathways, I mean like these kids start sometimes these classes in middle school and they take classes continually until they graduate high school. But

one of the pathways is biomedical science, and that's the pathway that I teach. But they have an eighth grade class called medical detectives. And then in high school, they have principles of biomedical science, which they take as freshmen, human body systems as sophomores, medical innovations as juniors, and then biomedical

I'm sorry, it was medical interventions as juniors and then biomedical innovations as seniors.

Gary (07:46.013)
Interesting. And then of course, for the honest listening in, I'm heavily involved with a nonprofit called Science Coach and Teresa, you are as well. Tell us what Science Coach does for you as a teacher and for your students as well.

Theresa Cordonier (07:59.818)
Um, science coach is amazing. So it, it helps me with my biomedical innovations class that I teach. So that, that capstone senior class, the capstone senior class is a class where the students get to choose their research. And then they literally just research that for the bulk of the school year.

And so I've taught it for, I think it's been five or six years. And my first year that I taught it, I was not a part of Science Coach. So it was just really hard to get my students mentors, to get them going on their projects. I didn't have a lot of resources for them. So I just, we were just kind of just floating by on the edge of our seats, just trying to make it through.

And my second year teaching, I heard about Science Coach and was like, all right, I'm gonna try this out. And so I've been with Science Coach for the past four or five years. And it has been unbelievable how much help they have been with just providing resources for the students so that they can create the most advanced projects, really, that a student can do at a high school level.

Gary (09:24.481)
I want to add a question here. One of your students last year did research on the diagnostic test called troponin. And for the listeners in the audience, troponin is the most significant indicator of a heart attack event taking place in real time. And Theresa, would you mind just sharing the story without names, of course, of why this student chose troponin and the research that she did?

Theresa Cordonier (09:32.172)
us.

Theresa Cordonier (09:47.454)
You know, to be honest, I think she, you know, it's been a year. I think the reason she chose it is because of you, actually. You had, I went to science coach training the summer before that school year, and you did a presentation where you also provided us with lots of ideas that high school students could do.

And so when I started the class, I just like gave them that list and I said, hey, here are some ideas that were provided to me at this training I went to. And she picked it out of that list. And we contacted you and you got her going and it was pretty awesome to watch. She actually got to go into a medical lab at

one of the hospitals to do her work. And she got a lot of experiences in the lab. She got a lot of contacts through it. And actually she wound up getting her phlebotomy certificate this past summer so that she could start working in a hospital.

Gary (11:07.573)
Well, I do know the details and I'm going to share not just the details for this young lady but another one just for our listening audience, Teresa. But this young lady's father had passed away from an acute heart attack. One of the tests that they had been doing on her father was his troponin.

Theresa Cordonier (11:18.539)
Yes.

Gary (11:24.809)
And troponin, being a medical laboratory scientist, is very susceptible, very sensitive, to something called hemolysis, which is the lysing, the destruction of red blood cells. And so this young lady's work was on trying to find a way to make troponin results more readily available, even in the face of hemolysis, to cut down on the time to get a good diagnosis of a heart attack victim. And it's very touching. And I'll share another story just for the listening audience, working for projects this year.

There is a student in a high school in Illinois who wants to do research on a gene called RUNX1, R-U-N-X1, and it's essentially something called hypothrombocytopenia, for those of you not in the laboratory, it's a low platelet count, and it's a disease that she has.

And she and her mother contacted me looking for guidance on how to do research on this wrong swan. And I'm doing for her like I did with this young lady from Timberland High School, putting her in touch with resources. The reason I share these stories is that while not all have a personal implication, it's important for the listening audience to recognize that medical laboratory science, there's a lot of

of science. Matter of fact, I tease when I do these presentations that Teresa talks about that if you have that medical laboratory science degree, you will become your family's medical health care professional source of information because you learn everything as a medical laboratory scientist. And it's just fascinating to watch these personal stories come into play. And high school students, 16, 17, 18 years old, doing research on topics that are just stunningly important, not just to themselves.

but to the world as well. And to take the conversation in a little bit different direction, Teresa, going back to health care careers a little bit, when your students, either in project lead-the-way, science coach, or even not in those programs, when your students are interested in health care careers, can you share in your experience how they're making decisions about which career they might want to pursue?

Theresa Cordonier (13:33.366)
Most of the students actually have family members that are in the medical field. And sometimes it's prompting from those family members, but other times the students see how their family members are in the medical field and see how rewarding it is and they're like, hey, I want to do that too. So that's usually what I see.

Gary (13:59.781)
And kind of in conjunction with that, and I'm gonna kind of put you on the spot here, and one piece of advice, if I were to say, Teresa, give these students, give these families that are considering healthcare careers, one most important piece of advice as they make that decision, what would that one single most important piece of advice be to students considering those healthcare careers?

Theresa Cordonier (14:27.022)
Take project lead the way biomedical science classes.

Gary (14:31.297)
There you go. Yeah, excellent. Excellent, excellent response. And then finally, the last question. It's kind of a bigger picture. And it's not just allied health careers, but just for those families and students listening to this, as these students and their families consider colleges, in your experience, what are they typically looking for in a college, in particular, when they're considering health care professions, health care majors?

Theresa Cordonier (14:34.177)
Yeah.

Theresa Cordonier (14:58.15)
Usually, and this can be for any career that they're looking at, not just medical, in the medical field, but really it's all about the reputation of that college and that they have for that specific pathway. So if it's a college that is well known for dentistry, then my students that are interested in becoming a dentist are going to try to go for.

that college. So reputation of the college definitely has a big role in their decisions on what colleges they want to go to.

Gary (15:38.289)
Interesting. Well, Theresa, as always, you have provided some profound responses to these questions. Our guest today has been Theresa Cordinier from Timberland High School in St. Charles County, Missouri. Theresa, as always, I'm grateful for your time and expertise. I thank you very much.

Theresa Cordonier (15:52.778)
No problem, thank you so much for having me again.

Gary (15:55.393)
And we'll talk next time on the podcast MLS 2030, Medical Laboratory Science in the year 2030. We'll talk next time.