Your school has added you as a teacher — this guide gets you from the invite email to a running classroom in a week, a few minutes at a time. Everything here happens in the teacher panel, your own view of TeachHero limited to your classes and students.
Note: Classes, classwork, grading, and attendance are included in every TeachHero plan. If those pages show a message asking for a plan instead, ask your admin — see Plans & Pricing.
Day 1: Get in and look around
- Accept the invite email from your school (or see Joining a School).
- You land on Home: a Getting started checklist, Today's classes (the classes you teach that meet today, each with a Take attendance button), and cards for work to grade and unread messages.
- Open Classes and click through each of yours; each opens on its Classwork tab. The class name, schedule, and roster are managed by your admins — if something's wrong there, tell them. What you control is on the class's Details tab: the class description, the Welcome email, and, under Grading settings, the grading system.
- Add your photo and a short bio: click your avatar (top right), then My profile.
Deep dive: Teacher Panel Basics
Day 2: Set up your welcome email
Set up a welcome email that sends itself:
- Create a template under Communication → Emails → Email templates: first-day details, supply list, how to reach you.
- Open your class and click the Details tab. In the Welcome email section, turn on Send a welcome email when a student enrolls, click Use a template to fill it in from your template, then click Save welcome email.
From then on, each newly enrolled student (and their parents) gets it automatically. Note it isn't sent retroactively — for students already in the class, send a one-time email to the class instead. While you're at it, set your default email signature.
Deep dive: Class Welcome Email
Day 3: Post your first announcement
Announcements appear to parents and students in the school portal — reminders, schedule changes, celebrations:
- Open your class → Announcements tab → New announcement.
- Write it. Post at starts at the current time; leave it to post right away, or pick a later time to schedule it.
- Click Post announcement. Families get an email when it's posted.
Deep dive: Class Announcements
Day 4: Add classwork
- On your class's Classwork tab, click New.
- Choose Lesson materials (ungraded content for everyone) or Assignment (graded, with points and a due date), then click Create.
- Click the new item to add instructions, links, and files, then Publish — classwork starts as a draft students can't see, and you can schedule it to appear later.
If your class grades by weighted categories (Quizzes 25%, Homework 25%, Exams 50%…), set up a grading system first so each assignment lands in a category. Once a class has a grading system, assignments without a category don't count toward the class grade.
Deep dive: Managing Classwork
Every class day: attendance
- On Home, click Take attendance next to the class (or open the class → Attendance tab → Record attendance). The date is already set to today.
- Click Record attendance. Everyone starts Present; change the exceptions to Absent, Tardy, or Excused right on each student's row.
The Summary tab keeps per-student attendance rates for you, and parents see attendance in their portal. Kept a log in a spreadsheet before this? On the Daily log, use Import & export → Import attendance to bring it in rather than retyping it.
Deep dive: Attendance
As the work rolls in
To grade is your grading queue — its badge counts work waiting for your grade. Type points to grade: typed points (even 0) count toward the class grade, and blank means not graded yet. And when a conversation needs privacy (behavior, health), use Messages (Communication → Messages → New message) rather than email: the thread stays inside TeachHero.
Deep dive: Grading Assignments