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Poughkeepsie City School District trains Innovation Lab managers with METEOR Education support
Summary
District staff and METEOR Education trainers prepared Innovation Lab managers to use new STEM-focused spaces, emphasizing flexible furniture, hands-on projects and shared digital resources to spread best practices across schools.
POUGHKEEPSIE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT trained a group of Innovation Lab managers and teacher leaders in a session to prepare them to run new STEM-focused Innovation Labs across the district (date not specified in the transcript).
District presenters introduced Michelle Costello of METEOR Education, who described the consultant role in listening to district needs, coordinating with designers and selecting equipment intended to meet the district’s goals for the new spaces. "Meteor Education has been working with Poughkeepsie School District for several years," Costello said, describing a process of planning and collaboration with the district and designers.
The training highlighted the labs’ physical design and instructional purpose. A presenter described the spaces as having "different colors, different lighting, different rearrangeable furniture" to create a nontraditional environment where students work hands-on outside their regular classrooms. A teacher leader said the labs allow teachers to gather students of multiple grade levels in one flexible space for experiments and long-term projects, adding, "This space allows us to get messy."
Speakers stressed systems to ensure consistent use across schools: managers will support teachers, plan how materials are organized, and implement unit-level structures so the lab can serve discovery-based lessons across grades. Costello noted managers are already creating shared Google Docs and drives so a successful activity in one building can be catalogued and adopted districtwide.
The session focused on instructional practices and resource-sharing rather than formal decisions or funding details; the transcript does not specify budget, timeline for rollout, or exact numbers of labs. The district said managers will help staff and teachers implement the spaces and share effective practices across the district.
