Lesson 1: Engage — Biotechnology in North Carolina Today

Introduction

Our economy in North Carolina began as a largely agrarian one. Many of our traditions today hearken back to that agricultural past, including the traditional school calendar. As time has passed, North Carolina gained many jobs from textile manufacturing. Farms consolidated and there were less small family farm operations and more, large scale industrial farms. Over the past few decades, textile and furniture manufacturing jobs have been lost by North Carolina – many of these jobs have gone overseas. The new jobs that have been coming in to replace these are biotechnology jobs. These jobs pay well, but require more training and expertise than traditional manufacturing jobs.

Learning Outcomes

Students will make connections between biotechnology and a healthy economy.

Curriculum Alignment

Goal 7.05 NCSCOS: Investigate aspects of biotechnology including: Specific genetic information available. Careers. Economic benefits to North Carolina. Ethical issues. Impact for agriculture.

Classroom Time Required

Approximately 30 minutes

Materials Needed

• Play Money, Things to purchase with play money (candy, stickers, pencils, etc.), Propsfor example: farmer hat and John Deere bandana; lab coats and safety glasses; wrench, yarn, cloth, socks; will work for food sign, unemployment check; toy cash register shopkeeper’s apron.
• Before class, use the Excel spreadsheet to determine the number of students who will fit into each category during each round. Cut a slip for each student with their career listed on it for each round. Put these slips in a bag for students to draw from for each round. For example, for the bag you will label “1900,” you might have 10 slips labeled “farmer,” 3 slips labeled “manufacturing,” 0 slips labeled “Biotech,” 16 slips labeled “Unemployed,” and 1 “shopkeeper” slip.

Technology Resources

Microsoft excel to plug in student numbers

Pre‐Activities

Begin with a warm up question: How do regular people depend on the success of businesses? Discuss answers, list on the board.

Activities

Students will role‐play the evolution of North Carolina’s economy over the past 100 years

1. At each round, students will draw slips from the bag for that year. Students will then move to an area you have designated in the room for that career. If desired, you can leave props set up at that station for students to wear or display.
2. When students move to their stations, ask them, “What kinds of jobs were most common in North Carolina during this time period?” Allow sufficient wait time to get answers. List on the board beside the date for that time period. After the first round, ask students, “How has the job market changed since the last time period?” Allow sufficient wait time to get answers. List on the board beside the date for that time period.
3. Pay the students and allow them to visit the shopkeeper to make purchases. Students MUST spend all of their earnings at the end of each round.
   
   1. Manufacturing and farmers will get $2 each
   2. Unemployed AFTER 1940 will get $1 (not before, there was no unemployment insurance then)
   3. Biotech workers will get $4 (the average biotech job pays double that of the average manufacturing job).
   4. The shopkeeper’s items will cost $1 each. He/she has to restock items at a cost of $0.90 each. This should allow the shopkeeper to make between $3‐5 per round, more as the biotech folks have more money to spend.
   5. If the shopkeeper needs help, he/she can hire one or more of the unemployed for $2 each.
4. Ask the shopkeeper to add up his money and list that total on the board.
5. Begin a new round.
6. At the end of the round, ask students to return to their seats. Ask students to discuss the following questions:
   
   1. How has North Carolina’s job market evolved over the past 100 years?
   2. What periods were the most prosperous?
   3. How do we know?
   4. What industry could help North Carolina continue to have a good economy in the future?
   5. Why do you think so?
   6. In real life, how do you get a job?
   7. Do any jobs have qualifications (things you need to have done or be able to do)?
   8. Why isn’t our game a perfect model of what has happened in the economy?
7. As an independent assignment, ask to students to write a paragraph to a page discussing the activity and what they learned from it. Discuss these briefly in the following class period. A question to carry forward to later lessons would be “What are the qualifications for getting a biotechnology job?

On board:

Year	Most Jobs	Changes	Shopkeeper’s Gross Income
1900
1940
1980
2000
2006

Assessment

Class discussion participation, Reflection paper

Modifications

LEP or EC students could be assigned a shorter amount of writing, or could be given a list of Agree/Disagree statements to respond to as an assessment of their understanding.

For example:

• Agree/Disagree: Biotechnology jobs pay more money than regular manufacturing jobs.
• Agree/Disagree: When more individuals make more money, the economy is better.
• Agree/Disagree: When more people are unemployed, shopkeepers make less money.
• Agree/Disagree: There are more farms today than there were in 1900.

Alternative Assessments

See modifications above.

Supplemental Information

Information on jobs was gathered from census data: www.uscensus.gov. For the purposes of the game, the percents were narrowed down to the main industries that have been the driving forces in North Carolina’s economy over the past 100 years. Jobs many students consider like becoming a doctor, lawyer, shop owner, video game programmer or teacher are service/entertainment jobs that depend on the overall economy to be profitable and available. The unemployment figures are the actual percent unemployment reported by the census, which I found somewhat surprising, particularly for 1940. Information was also taken from the North Carolina Rural Center: www.ncruralcenter.org and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center: http://www.ncbiotech.org/

Critical Vocabulary

• Manufacturing
• Unemployment
• Industry
• Economy
• Biotechnology

Websites

www.ncbiotechcenter.org