Realms was so fortunate to have Brandon Palmer run a week long summer camp. Brandon is a CTE Criminal Justice instructor in Jordan School District at the JATC, an adjunct professor at SLCC, and has won many awards for his excellence in the field of education. He is an inspiring, devoted, fun, and passionate educator. Here is what Brandon has to say about the week…
Student interest matters! When students are interested in a topic they are more engaged and excited about what they are learning. With this in mind, I asked the students which areas of investigations and forensics they were most interested in learning.
The Physics of Blood Spatter
“Forensics camp was rad! I had a ton of fun solving the crime scene the instructor set up for us. The teacher was really cool and taught us a lot of interesting things. I didn’t realize how much went into investigating crimes”
More self-defense with MMA instructor and Realms parent Justin Ellison
The students in this class did not have a problem expressing their opinions or self directing their learning. I was impressed with how well they interacted and how comfortable they were with each other. For an hour or two each morning we did a self defense session and/or law enforcement training and scenarios. There was a crime scene set up as well that we investigated through out the week as they learned more about forensic evidence and investigative methods.
Empowering Students with Self-Defense!
Self-Defense
The self defense part had a positive impact on the students and we discussed real life scenarios and psychological effects to knowing and learning how to defend ourselves. One day we had one of the student’s parents (Justin Ellison) visit and teach the class. He was wonderful and had a huge impact on the students.
Learning How to Disarm a Gunman.
“I had so much fun exploring different aspects of forensics at this camp! I really enjoyed solving the crime scene and learning how to pick up fingerprints. I learned lots of new things and would definitely attend this camp again in the future!”
Police Training
The Students learned the proper way to put on handcuffs. They practiced this throughout the week and on the last day competed in a handcuffing competition. Students were also exposed to “Shoot, No Shoot” scenarios to experience real time situations where they had to decide to shoot a suspect or not.
“I loved learning all of the amazing and interesting things in forensics as well as self-defense. The teacher was so kind and easy to understand, he had the perfect amount of sternness. I had no idea how hard forensics was.”
Crime Scene Investigation
Students decided to split into two teams as I introduced the investigation and showed them the crime scene. They decided to split in two teams and compete to see who could solve it first. The integrity these kids had was impressive. The class room was split in two with whiteboards as walls for offices. All the information they collected was written on these whiteboards along with any connections they had made. The students did not even attempt to to cheat off each other. Each team used different methods and went in two distinct and different directions, but came to the same conclusion (almost at the same time).
Each student seemed to get something out of this week and as a teacher, I definitely learned a lot from teaching these students. They were engaged, started great discussions as a class as well as among smaller internal groups. It was exciting to see that the learning continued at home as parents told me that when their child came home they would go over the investigation, discuss ideas or scenarios, and even express interest in certain areas of the criminal justice system!
Thank you for the opportunity to take part in this summer camp! The benefits that come from programs like this are too many to ignore and there needs to be much more.
Thank you Brandon for an amazing week! We hope to see more of you at Realms this year!
Brandon Palmer, M.Ed.
I am not a “glass half full” type of person. I am a “where did I put my glass” kind of person.
I worked in the criminal justice system for 17 years. In 1999 I started at the Salt Lake County Jail as a correction officer. I worked in all the different security levels of housing units, training officer, and in processing (booking). In 2003, I was hired by the West Jordan Police Department. As a police officer I worked as a patrol officer, trained new officers, and served on the S.W.A.T. team.
As I worked, I continued my education and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, and several years later I earned a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education. This prepared me for my departure from fulltime law enforcement to education.
In 2010 I married my beautiful wife, who has supported me through my transition from law enforcement to education. I have since added 3 more children to my family, totaling 5 amazing children. Shortly after graduating I began teaching Criminal Justice (CTE, and Concurrent Enrollment) part-time at Copper Hills High School. In 2016 I began working with the Grizzly’s wrestling team, which I am still doing to this day.
2015 I left the police force, and was fortunate to begin working at Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers (JATC) and became a full time employee with the Jordan School District. In the summer of 2017 I was given the opportunity to work as an adjunct professor at Salt Lake Community College.