Pathways

Let Us Help You With Your Journey

Pathways feature hand-selected programming tracks to maximize your conference experience through a curated grouping of sessions centered around a specific topic of interest.

NSTA Professional Learning

Made up of experienced educators and facilitators, the NSTA Professional Learning Team supports teachers in bringing research-based, high-quality science instruction to life. Session participants will explore practical strategies, examine classroom practice, and strengthen science teaching in ways that support meaningful learning for every student.

• Becoming a Sensemaking Reviewer
  This pathway helps teachers and leaders use the NSTA Sensemaking Tool to design, evaluate, and strengthen lessons that promote authentic student sensemaking.
• Building Durable Skills Through STEM
  This pathway explores how STEM experiences can intentionally build students’ durable skills, such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Participants will examine practical strategies for designing and implementing STEM experiences that strengthen these skills.
• From Farms to Future: Integrating NGSS, Career Pathways, and Food Science
  This pathway explores how food and agriculture offer rich, authentic contexts for students to make sense of scientific phenomena while exploring solutions to real-world challenges that impact their communities and the global food system.
• From Vision to Practice: Leading Sensemaking
  This pathway helps instructional leaders strengthen teacher practice through effective feedback, coaching, and practical tools for supporting student sensemaking.
• High School Haven Pathway: CTE and Science Connections
  This pathway explores how three-dimensional, phenomena-driven instruction connects science learning to high-demand careers through aligned science, CTE, and career-readiness strategies.
• Multilingual Sensemaking (NSTA + BSCS)
  This pathway helps educators strengthen science instruction for multilingual learners through inclusive design, targeted language supports, and strategies that promote sensemaking and participation.
• Meaningful STEM
  This pathway helps educators recognize ways that STEM experiences can be relevant and engaging to their students, so that students build STEM identity and develop durable skills. Participants will also be introduced to NSTA’s new badging system, and are invited to continue their learning after the conference by demonstrating their knowledge and skills to earn a competency-based, verifiable digital badge.
• OpenSciEd Teacher Training 
  Led by NSTA expert facilitators, this pathway helps educators strengthen student sensemaking through inclusive discussions, routines, and OpenSciEd tools.

Advocacy in Action: Leading for Change

Presented by the NSTA Advocacy Team

Join us to explore key science and STEM policy issues impacting the teaching profession in 2026. Gain practical knowledge on the basics of grassroots advocacy and learn how to effectively engage with local, state, and national elected officials. Leverage your leadership to amplify your voice and transform your commitment to inclusive, high-quality science and STEM education into bold, systemic action!

NSTA Press

Come learn from our esteemed NSTA Press authors, sharing their love of learning with research-backed expertise on a wide array of topics. Hear how our NSTA Kids books make science fun and fill the needs of teachers and parents by providing lively children’s picture books that also impart sound science. You'll head back to the classroom with realistic, ready-to-use teaching strategies you can implement on Monday.

Data Literacy for Science Sensemaking

Presented by NSTA and Tuva

When your students look at a graph, do they see an insurmountable hurdle or a scientific story waiting to be told? This five-part series, co-facilitated by the Tuva and NSTA professional learning teams, empowers educators to seamlessly integrate data literacy with NGSS Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs). You will explore how grade-level math standards and science practices intersect to support deep student analysis. Using interactive tools and authentic datasets, you will gain practical strategies to help students frame investigable questions, model relationships, and strengthen argumentation for daily science sensemaking.

HASTI (Hoosier Association of Science Teachers, Inc.)

HASTI serves as the voice for science and STEM educators across the state! Connect with other Indiana science educators and learn more about HASTI and the work being done in science education across the state.  Pathway presentations cover a wide variety of topics in science and help showcase two BIG 10 Indiana universities along with several organizations teachers can connect with to bring new discoveries in science to their classrooms!

Indiana Educator Pathway: Strengthening Science, STEM, and Computer Science Instruction Across the Hoosier State

This pathway features sessions created specifically for Indiana teachers and instructional leaders who are implementing the state’s science, computer science, and STEM initiatives. Participants will explore updated instructional and assessment frameworks, cross‑content planning tools, and statewide guidance that supports high-quality three-dimensional science learning. These sessions provide practical direction for classroom instruction and insight into current and emerging priorities across Indiana.

AI Strand Spotlight

Artificial intelligence is rapidly shaping the future of science teaching and learning. Visit the AI Hub to explore sessions in this hot topic area, where educators will share practical strategies for using AI to support student sensemaking, strengthen classroom instruction, and prepare learners for an evolving STEM landscape.

AI that Supports Student Sensemaking in STEM Education

Learn with STEM education experts from inquiryHub at the University of Colorado Boulder as we explore how AI can support STEM sensemaking for students, teachers, and teacher leaders through a Human-AI Teaming Toolkit, STEM units that integrate AI meaningfully, using AI to support, not replace learning!

Bringing Computer Science to Every Student Through Science: OpenSciEd + Computer Science

How can we make computer science accessible to every student while deepening science learning? This pathway showcases OpenSciEd + Computer Science, an innovative approach that integrates coding, sensors, data analysis, modeling, and engineering design into phenomenon-based middle school science instruction. Through a series of hands-on sessions, participants will experience how students use micro, digital tools, and computational thinking to investigate natural hazards, water challenges, weather and climate systems, collisions, and sound technologies. Rather than treating computer science as a separate subject, OpenSciEd + Computer Science embeds computational experiences within meaningful science learning, helping students understand how technologies work by opening the “black box” and empowering them to design, test, and improve solutions to real-world problems. Educators will leave with practical examples, classroom strategies, and a vision for how OpenSciEd can expand access to both high-quality science and computer science learning for all students.

Designing AI-Resilient Science Learning Experiences: Building a Classroom Culture of Sensemaking, Reasoning, and Evidence

Presented by STAC

This three-part Partner Session Series explores how educators can design AI-resilient science learning experiences that keep students actively engaged in making sense of scientific ideas. Participants will examine how the Science and Engineering Practices can be used to design or revise tasks, establish classroom routines that support productive struggle and scientific discourse, and assess understanding when a polished final product is no longer enough. Across the series, participants will consider how tasks, expectations, discussion routines, and assessment practices can work together to create classrooms in which students question information, test ideas, explain their thinking, respond to feedback, and revise their conclusions. Each session stands alone while contributing to a coherent approach to sustaining meaningful science learning when students have access to AI.

From the Boardroom to the Classroom: Sessions by Leaders in the Illinois Science Teaching Association

In these sessions, you will have a chance to learn from local Illinois leaders and classroom teachers about topics relevant to your science classroom. You will take away practical knowledge and skills that can be applied to your next lesson.

Gateway to Innovation: STOM Partner Sessions at NSTA Indianapolis

Explore innovative, three-dimensional science instruction with the Science Teachers of Missouri (STOM). As official NSTA Partner Sessions, our featured Missouri educators and leaders are delivering eight dynamic presentations and hands-on workshops in Indianapolis. Join us to dive into equity-driven instruction, policy advocacy, storytelling in the NGSS classroom, tech integration via microcontrollers, and the use of award-winning STEM trade books to bring the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) to life.

Innovation and Rigor in OpenSciEd High School Science: From Sensemaking to AI

How can high school science educators maintain rigorous content learning while embracing innovative approaches that deepen student thinking? This pathway showcases how OpenSciEd High School courses blend disciplinary rigor, student sensemaking, and emerging technologies to support meaningful science learning. Participants will explore how traditional chemistry, biology, and physics concepts are intentionally woven into phenomenon-driven storylines that help students build lasting understanding without sacrificing essential content. Sessions will highlight where foundational topics such as atomic structure, stoichiometry, genetics, ecosystems, forces, energy, and momentum are developed across OpenSciEd High School courses and how these design choices preserve students’ opportunities for discovery and explanation. The pathway also explores OpenSciEd’s emerging work with artificial intelligence, demonstrating practical strategies that help students use AI as a tool for reasoning, investigation, and critical evaluation rather than as a replacement for thinking. Educators will leave with a deeper understanding of how OpenSciEd supports rigorous, engaging, and future-ready science learning.

Introducing Class CrunchLabs: Mark Rober Brings the Wow & Your Students Explain the How

This learning pathway helps teachers deliver rigorous, standards-aligned science that hits like a glitter bomb full of fart spray (in the best way). Teachers will learn how to launch three Class CrunchLabs units, implement built-in curriculum supports, teach and assess with video, and stick the landing—glitter, fart spray, and all. We’ll also dive into hands-on challenges designed by our toy engineers to build resilience and creative confidence. The big win? Teachers leave ready to bring ‘the wow.’ We’ll let students explain ‘the how.’

Leading Change That Sticks

Join BSCS Science Learning across a series of pathway sessions to connect with others who are leading change to improve science teaching and equitable learning across their schools and districts. Together, we’ll consider what it takes to develop a system of support for teachers as they take on the shifts called for by NRC’s Framework and the NGSS and/or required to effectively use high-quality instructional materials. Given that leading change is a critical leadership practice, plan to join us anew or dig deeper into learning from the Leaders Institute through this pathway!

Lifelong Learning with DoW STEM

Step into the DoW STEM pathway and discover how the Department of War is preparing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and innovators. In these sessions, you’ll connect with DoW partners to discover strategies for creating unique, hands-on learning experiences for students of all ages. Explore hands-on programs, internships, scholarships, and career resources for students, as well as professional development and instructional tools designed to empower educators. Join us to see how DoW STEM fosters lifelong learning, sparks curiosity, and connects students of all ages to meaningful, career-building STEM experiences.

Making Sense of the World: Teaching for Curious, Capable Elementary Sensemakers

What does it take to build elementary science experiences that are coherent, equitable, and driven by students’ own questions? This session series explores powerful, research-supported practices—including storyline teaching, multilingual learner supports, productive discussions, three-dimensional assessment, and integrating math and literacy as tools for figuring out phenomena. With models drawn from the OpenSciEd Elementary curriculum but designed for universal use, these sessions offer concrete approaches teachers can use tomorrow to spark curiosity, deepen understanding, and expand access to high-quality science learning for every student.

NSELA Pathway for Leaders

Tailored specifically for science education leaders, this comprehensive four-part series focuses on cultivating inclusive, participant-focused school and district initiatives. The sequential sessions guide attendees from foundational systems-based frameworks and collaborative team protocols to strategic communication and data-driven reflection structures. Leaders will emerge from the pathway equipped with concrete tools to move their organizations from awareness to systemic action.

Join us in the Leadership Lounge! The Leadership Lounge is open to all science education leaders and provides a space to informally gather and recharge with like-minded colleagues. Light refreshments will be periodically provided throughout the day.