Can you share a specific success story where your organization helped science education leaders overcome a challenge?

TCI's award-winning K-8 science programs are used by districts across the country. What we hear from teachers and supervisors over and over is that they love the hands-on approach, the ready-to-teach lessons, and the depth of supporting resources that come with the program.

One example that stands out is Gloucester Township Public Schools in New Jersey. They first adopted Bring Science Alive! and Social Studies Alive! for K–5 back in 2017. When their re-evaluation cycle came around, they chose to stay with TCI, and the reason behind that decision is what makes it worth telling.

K–5 teachers are responsible for every subject in the building. So the bar for a science program isn't just rigor. It has to be something a first-grade teacher can actually open and use on a Monday morning without three weeks of prep. Chris Mason, their Supervisor of Curriculum and Instruction for Science and Tech-Ed, put it this way: "TCI does a great job of organizing the materials, providing resources, and offering interesting links, videos, and hands-on experiments for science. For a teacher, setting up a lab with individual purchases and finding materials can be challenging. TCI's one-stop-shopping option simplifies the process for our district."

Read the full Gloucester story here , and explore more science success stories from districts across the country here.

What strategies or resources have been most effective in supporting science education leaders through your programs or services?

The science supervisors we partner with consistently identify three priorities: implementing curriculum that authentically reflects the Framework for K–12 Science Education and the NGSS, addressing variability in student engagement, and sustaining teacher growth beyond initial training.

Bring Science Alive! was designed around the research underpinning the NGSS itself. Each unit is anchored in real-world phenomena, an instructional approach supported by the National Research Council's call for three-dimensional learning, where students apply science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts to make sense of a phenomenon rather than receiving content as a set of disconnected facts. Hands-on investigations sit at the core of every unit because the research is clear: students develop deeper conceptual understanding when they engage in the practices of science, asking questions, designing investigations, analyzing data, and constructing evidence-based explanations.

Multimodal supports, including simulations, videos, and interactive digital tools, extend access to content and draw on the well-established finding that students benefit from multiple representations of complex science ideas.

Professional development is built on the same evidence base: implementation training at adoption, followed by live and on-demand webinars, in-app guidance teachers can access in the moment of instruction, and ongoing learning opportunities, including our annual Back to School Summit. The result is professional learning that supports teachers throughout the year, not only at launch.

The first question we ask is whether students are actually doing science. Are they running investigations, arguing from evidence, building models, designing solutions? The hands-on investigations and engineering challenges in Bring Science Alive! are designed so engagement isn't optional, but supervisors still need to see it landing in classrooms.

That's where our reporting dashboard comes in. It gives administrators and supervisors real visibility into how schools and educators are using the program: license usage by school and grade level, which teachers have completed in-app PD courses, which integrations are being used with the district's existing tech stack, and how students are performing on the NGSS-designed assessments. The supervisors who get the most out of it treat the dashboard as a coaching tool.

Success also means science is reaching every student. We've built supports for multilingual learners and students with IEPs directly into the program: read-aloud audio, translation features, embedded scaffolds, and modified text levels that meet students where they are.

Empowering science education leaders takes more than supplying materials. Leaders need a coherent instructional model, visibility into what's happening across classrooms, and a curriculum that grows teacher capacity year over year.

That's where TCI puts its work. Our K-8 science programs are built on research-backed teaching strategies refined in real classrooms over decades. Storyline-driven units, anchoring phenomena, hands-on investigations, and engineering challenges give supervisors a consistent instructional approach from kindergarten through eighth grade. Our reporting dashboard gives administrators real visibility into how the program is being used, from license activity to in-app PD completion, integrations, and assessment performance. And our PD model is designed to deepen teacher skill over time, not just deliver a launch event.

The reach reflects what's working. Last year (across social studies and science), 115,000+ teachers signed in to bring learning alive in their classrooms, 1.7 million+ students experienced active learning with TCI, and 3,600+ educators built new skills through TCI events.

Leaders are most effective when they have a coherent program, evidence to guide their decisions, and a curriculum that builds teacher capacity year over year. That's the work we focus on.

NSELA connects us directly to the people doing the actual work of science leadership across districts. Supervisors, coordinators, directors. It’s helped us shape our product roadmap, and how we think about supporting the K-8 science teachers who are often the most stretched. Beyond the day-to-day feedback, NSELA events, webinars, and collaborative initiatives give us a chance to learn from leaders who are already advancing the field.

What advice would you give to district and state science supervisors looking to strengthen science education leadership in their schools?

The strongest science programs we see live in districts where PD happens all year long, where experienced teachers lead sessions for their colleagues, and where the people closest to the classroom are trusted to shape what learning looks like. Build the collaboration around that. Make space for teachers to plan together, observe each other, and share what's working. Some of the best science instruction happens when departments stop operating as silos and start trading strategies on literacy, modeling, and inquiry. A culture of growth and shared learning is what turns a good curriculum into a strong program.