Osceola County School District
Osceola County, Florida
A good orchestra isn’t a group of people playing the same note, the same way. It’s musicians trusting each other to carry their own part and knowing it will add up to something greater together. The result is often both unique and beautiful.
This orchestra metaphor was exactly what Cyndi Long, District Science Coordinator in Osceola County, Florida, used to describe the county’s science educators. There’s the data specialist. A literacy expert. A science coach so skilled, colleagues describe her work as “incredible.” Combine these educators with Long, as well as a dedicated Partner Success Manager from Discovery Education, and the result is an orchestra, partnering together to use Discovery Education’s Science Techbook and reach every student in grades K-8.
A District-Wide Vote of Confidence
Long praises her educators and understands that they are the reason for student success.
When Osceola began the science adoption process, they were looking for something that was standards-aligned and user-friendly. Long and her facilitators leaned on committees, composed of educators who would be using the curriculum in their own classrooms. After extensive review, these committees landed on Science Techbook at both the elementary and middle school level.
“Discovery Education Science Techbook filled a lot of gaps,” said Long. “The engagement, the videos, the strategies, the alignment, and the ease of use really filled the hole of what we were missing before.”
“We were looking for active learning experiences, so the kits were also a real selling point,” Long continued. “Having everything ready to go made it a very attractive option.”
Grounded in How Students Learn
For Long and her dedicated crew of teachers, everything always comes back to one measure: student engagement and learning. That means inquiry-based science instruction, taught through the 5E Instructional Model—Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. “This model is our foundational belief, it’s what our teachers know, and how we know students learn,” she said.
She feels Discovery Education’s Science Techbook supports this philosophy. “The active learning
experiences, the fact that learning is not just digital, and the application—bringing in real-life phenomena—all that really resonates,” said Long.
Long also points to the sheer number of assets Discovery Education Science Techbook offers, noting that the volume and range make it easier to adapt so they’re useful, engaging, and applicable for every classroom.
Trust, Earned in the Classroom
Osceola faced the usual first-year hurdles when adopting a new curriculum, but Long says that the partnership with Discovery Education, and specifically with their partner success representative, Susan Toto, helped smooth the bumps. “Susan learned our county in a way I’ve never seen any other partner do,” said Long. “In doing this, she learned our needs.”
Toto visited individual schools to work with teachers and address challenges in the moment. In one example Long noted, Toto worked with educators to align Florida standards to content and assets within Science Techbook, creating dynamic experiences for students. “It was phenomenal and really benefitted teachers and students,” Long said.
Long says that Toto‘s continuous work with principals and educators has resulted in even more trust. Ultimately, this all trickles down to classrooms. “Our goal is always the student learning, the student engagement, curiosity, and learning science. We’re just here to support them.”
For Long, the measure of success has never been complicated. It’s students, curious and engaged, learning science. And with a full orchestra behind them, Osceola County is playing in tune.
Quick Facts
Osceola County, Florida
District Details
- 58 schools serving 80,000+ students in K-12
- Partnered with Discovery Education since 2018
Three Takeaways About Science Techbook in Osceola County
- A teacher-driven adoption built buy-in. Osceola let educator committees choose Science Techbook themselves, and that ownership carried through into strong engagement during implementation.
- Active, hands-on learning drives real engagement. Science Techbook’s kits and real-world connections helped Osceola move beyond screen-only instruction and toward genuinely active science learning.
- A dedicated, responsive partner built trust. Discovery Education’s partner success representative solved problems in real time and built relationships with teachers and principals alike, showing that curriculum adoption succeeds through people, not just materials.
