Some may know Kristy Palmeri as “Coach Palmeri” after four years of coaching freshman and now varsity cheerleading.  She also participates in boxing as well as instructing Zumba classes at her local gym.

Palmeri said, “It’s important to me to spend time with my family and friends, not to mention that I love to do so. I also love to cook and it’s exciting to me to visit new restaurants and try new food, along with traveling.”

While Palmeri stays busy outside the classroom, she’s a passionate educator who first started her career at Solon by teaching science, environmental science, anatomy, and physiology. Palmeri continues to teach biology and honors biology now in her fifth year at Mayfield, along with her added class at the newly established Innovation Center.

Palmeri spends first and fifth periods each day inside the renovated regional library, where she teaches the Principles of Biomedical Science that is currently only offered to ninth grade students. Through the established model of the Innovation Center, Palmeri said, “The students are involved in hands-on learning rather than sitting in a classroom being lectured at for 50 minutes a day. Teachers act as guiding facilitators as they engage the students in lab activities and independently conducted research.”

The Principles of Biomedical Science course does not stand alone in the Innovation Center, but the structure also houses the home of two Excel Tecc programs: CADD and Medical Technologies, along with another 9th grade science class: engineering science and a fabrication lab (better known as the “Fab Lab”).

At this time, ninth grade classes are the only classes offered at the building because each year, the students will follow the “pathway” of the system as they grow the student population. Next year, Mayfield will be adding tenth grade courses to the center, and so on. Therefore, the students will follow the ongoing prescriptive courses each in preparation for college and career readiness in the specific domains of science, technology, engineering, and medical technologies.

Unfortunately, the building has had a slow start according to Palmeri.  She said, “We ordered all new equipment for the building, which is great! The only problem is that we still have not received all of it yet. It’s been difficult to start the year off with limited supplies, but as soon as they arrive we will be in great shape.”

Approaching the start of the school year, the teachers volunteered during the summer to attend trainings and professional development courses to become leading experts in the area of STEM academics. Project Lead the Way facilitated these sessions as they introduced the new system of teaching, and how to provide instructional experiences for students so that they learn the content necessary to succeed. Teachers from schools all over the nation attended these training sessions because Mayfield is a part of a growing number of educational institutions with a focused instructional initiative around the STEM work.

The class Palmeri teaches is centered on the theme of a crime scene where the students are actively involved in the process of investigating a woman’s death. Each day, they are given additional pieces of evidence to research and observe such as the medical records, diary entries and autopsy reports. The goal of the school year for the students is to create and execute a research plan needed in order to determine how the woman, Anna, died.  Palmeri said, “To the students, it’s all a mystery. It’s like one big game all school year.

“It is taking a great amount of time and money to create the Innovation Center into a useful and successful educational center, but as soon as we are settled in, it will all be worth it,” Palmeri said.