Straight answers

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Is this for me?10

What is Teacher Supreme?: Teacher Supreme is a mobile-first app for K-12 teachers: you log what you see and hear about your students, and it turns that into parent emails, reports, and in-the-moment coaching. It runs in your phone's browser instead of coming from an app store. It was designed and created by James Morris — a public school teacher in California for 35 years — and shaped by teacher feedback.
What does Teacher Supreme actually do?: A teacher logs a student interaction in one of three ways: tap one of the nine buttons on the student's card — Behavior or Academics, whichever the toggle is set to; speak while the mic is on — “Betty is working at the table with a partner, and Betty has been concentrating for ten minutes straight” — and the app writes down those words; or snap a photo of the student's work. Every entry is saved with the student, the date, and the time. The app also listens for a first name from that class: heard twice inside about six seconds, that student's card comes up on its own, so the teacher logs without stopping to search. Those logged interactions become same-day parent emails, weekly reports, and In-the-Moment Mentor coaching tips on the confirm bar — the next thing to say while the student is still there.
What does Teacher Supreme do that a gradebook doesn't already do?: A gradebook records what a student turned in and what grade they got. It doesn't capture what a teacher noticed about how a student worked, said in the teacher's own words, at the moment it happened. Teacher Supreme is built around a “logged interaction” — the teacher taps or says what they saw, and it's filed under one of 24 research-based indicators or a memo the teacher approves, building a searchable record over the year.
How is this different from a points app like ClassDojo?: A points app counts behavior points and messages parents; it doesn't hand the teacher the sentence to say back to a student or preserve the words the teacher actually used. Teacher Supreme is the memory layer — private to the teacher, searchable later — organized around 24 research-based indicators with coaching at three levels (Try first / Say next / Go deeper) rather than a point tally.
What are the 24 indicators?: A curated set of six things to watch for in each of four categories: Cognitive Investment (like explaining reasoning or summarizing), Active Participation (like peer teaching or group contribution), Cognitive Withdrawal (like task avoidance or low effort), and Off-Task Behavior (like side conversation or defiance). Each one sits behind a quick-log button and carries a plain-English definition, what it looks or sounds like in the room, and a short coaching move you can use right then.
Where do the 24 indicators come from — is this real research?: Each one is tied to a named study or researcher, shown in the Observation Library. Some come from Hattie's synthesis of many meta-analyses (for things like summarization or questioning), labeled as an approximate figure and read as a strong signal rather than a measured gain. Others, mostly the negative indicators, come from specific classroom studies (learned helplessness, task latency, rapid-guessing behavior) that carry no single effect size, and those are described in words instead of a number rather than guessing at one.
Does Teacher Supreme raise test scores?: No trial has tested that, and we will not imply otherwise. What exists is research on the practices — feedback, wait time, coaching — that made us build it this way. That research is the reason for the design, not a measurement of the product. Anyone selling you software on an achievement claim should be asked for the trial; so should we, when there is one. The science page carries the full version, including every place the research is contested or narrower than it is usually quoted.
If teachers already know this research, why do they need software?: Because knowing it was never the barrier. When Mary Budd Rowe taught teachers to pause about three seconds after a question, student answers got three to seven times longer and quiet students started speaking again — and learning that one pause took six to twelve hours, seven or eight teachers in ten reached it, and most drifted back by the third or fourth week without someone there to talk it through. Coaching is the strongest answer we have, and a review of sixty causal studies found its effect on instruction thins out as programs grow past a hundred teachers. You cannot put a person beside every teacher every day. That gap — between what a teacher knows in August and what they can reach for at 10:40 on a Tuesday — is the whole reason this exists.
What's the actual research behind the coaching, not just marketing claims?: The coaching language is tied to named, checkable studies: Mueller & Dweck (1998) on why praising effort beats praising intelligence; Hattie's Visible Learning synthesis on feedback and the teacher-student relationship; Wisniewski, Zierer & Hattie (2020) on what makes feedback effective; Rowe (1986) on wait time after a question; Cook et al. (2017) and Caldarella et al. (2023) on staying positive rather than chasing a fixed praise ratio; and Rosenshine (2012) behind many of the next-move suggestions. The sources are linked on the science page so anyone can check the primary paper.
How much time does this actually save a teacher?: The one time comparison the product stands behind: preparing for a parent conversation by digging through gradebooks, sticky notes, and memory takes about 15 minutes per student; with interactions already logged in class, turning that into a brief takes about 90 seconds. Beyond that figure, broader time savings have not been independently measured, and the product says so plainly.

Getting started9

Is there a free trial, and do I need a card to start?: Yes — 28 free days, every Basic and Plus feature unlocked, and no card is needed to start. The clock begins when you add your first real class roster, not when you sign up; signing up alone starts nothing.
How do I set up my class with a roster photo?: Snap one photo of a printed roster or your student information system screen, and the app reads off the names and IDs for you. You check the list it found before anything is saved — nothing is added to your roster until you tap Save.
Can I import my roster from a spreadsheet instead of a photo?: Yes — upload a CSV or Excel file and it imports every column at once, including names, IDs, and parent contacts, no photo needed. It is also the fallback when a roster photo doesn't scan cleanly.
Can I just type in my students myself?: Yes. A Type-manually option adds one student at a time, and you can dictate the name by voice instead of typing. Slower for a whole class than a photo or spreadsheet, but it is there for the odd student a scan misses or a small add-on class.
How long does setting up my class take?: Most of setup is optional and skippable — only adding a roster is asked for up front (by photo, spreadsheet, or typing), and the bell-schedule step can be added later from the More tab. A single-photo roster import is the fastest path: review the names it found and tap Save.
How do I sign in — do I need a password?: No password. You type your email and get a one-time sign-in link; tapping it on the same device signs you in. The link expires in an hour, and if a school mail system holds onto it, write to support@teachersupreme.com and a human will help.
Can I sign in with Google instead of the emailed link?: Yes — Continue with Google sits right alongside the emailed link, useful if your district runs on Google Workspace. It always asks you to pick an account first, so on a shared staff laptop you are never silently signed in as whoever used it last.
Do I have to install anything from an app store?: No. Teacher Supreme is a website that behaves like an app: it opens full-screen with its own home-screen icon, and the class screen keeps working even when the school Wi-Fi doesn't. You visit the site and add it to your home screen in a couple of taps.
Which phones and browsers work with Teacher Supreme?: iPhone (Safari), Android phones (Chrome), and Chromebooks — tapping, typing, and photo capture work on all of them. Voice logging works broadly too; where your audio is processed differs: on iPhone (iOS 17+) and up-to-date Chrome, Android, and ChromeOS it is transcribed on your own device, and on older browsers it falls back to that browser's own speech service, which you are told about the first time it applies.

In class, every day13

What happens on day one in class?: You turn on listening for the period, and when a student's name comes up twice in the ordinary flow of talking to or about them, their card surfaces on its own so you can log with a tap, a word, or a photo. Listening runs only when you turn it on and stops when you turn it off. You can also just tap a student's card and use the keyboard or camera — voice is one way in, not the only one.
How do I log something with a tap?: Every student's card has a 3x3 grid of one-tap buttons in three columns: a student who needs you now, students lifting each other up or going deeper, and work worth reinforcing. Flip the toggle to switch the grid between behavior and academics. Tap what you noticed and it joins that student's record right away. Press and hold the Log button to write a note or set a reminder; double-tap it to photograph student work.
How does voice logging work?: Turn the mic on with the Tap-to-listen pill on the Class screen and keep teaching normally. Once a student's card surfaces, describe what you see out loud and the grid rearranges to show the nine most likely buttons with the best match glowing — say the matching word, or answer a quick either/or question when it isn't clear-cut. Nothing is logged without you confirming it, and the app listens only while the mic is on.
Why do I have to say a student's name twice?: The app listens for a student in your class whose first name is heard twice within about six seconds, and then that student's card floats to the top ready to log. Ordinary classroom talk clears that on its own, with no special phrasing. When you want the card up right away, saying the name twice quickly is the fastest version of the same rule. A nickname set in the student's Goes-by field is heard too, and all the matching happens on your device.
What does In-the-Moment Mentor show me?: The instant the app recognizes what it heard, or you tap a grid button, it shows a short research-aligned phrase for what to say next, right beside the Log button — read it, adapt it, or say your own words, then log it. Long-press any indicator for the fuller ranked coaching sequence behind that line; that deeper reading never sits on the fast-tap grid, because it is for when you have stopped to look.
What do Try first, Say next, and Go deeper mean?: They are the three ranked coaching moves behind every one of the 24 indicators. Try first names the exact strategy the student used so you can praise it specifically; Say next asks the student to push the thinking a step further, like explaining a second way to reach the same answer; Go deeper asks the student to name or apply the strategy themselves, so it becomes something they can repeat on purpose. A negative indicator ends with If it persists instead. Each move spells out the exact words, why it works, and the researcher behind it.
What happens when a student says “I don't know”?: It is tracked as its own indicator — an immediate I-don't-know, a shrug, or avoided eye contact instead of an attempt, which research on learned helplessness treats as a pattern worth noticing early rather than a one-off. The coaching move is to swap the yes-or-no question for a noticing question the student cannot get wrong, such as what one thing they do notice about the first part of the problem. The goal is keeping the student in the conversation instead of letting them opt out.
Which students need me today?: Ask Agentic Angel gives a one-tap list of the students who most need you right now, each with why and a next step you can take on the spot — the same ranking that orders your Class screen. It weighs an IEP or 504 on file, a teacher-flagged urgent concern, a medical flag, how long since you last logged anything for that student, and recent positive logs, which lower the urgency because that student is already being reached.
What is the Quiet Star nudge?: A gentle prompt that surfaces up to two students with no logged interactions in the last three days — a reminder that a quiet student is not necessarily a student who is fine, just one you have not checked in on lately. It is worded as an encouraging suggestion for a quick hello, never a complaint, and it caps at two students at a time.
What is the Class screen, and why do student cards move around?: It is the main screen you teach from — a search bar and mic on top, then one card per student with the quick-log grid, plus tools like End Class, Rounds, and Teams. Cards reorder on their own: a student you have not reached lately stays near the top, logging a student drops their card down, and a student a search or voice match surfaces floats up until you log them. The top of the stack is always your best next check-in.
How do I find something a student did weeks ago?: Tap a student's name to open their record, where a Timeline lists everything logged in order — taps, notes, parent contacts, work photos, grade snapshots — with a real search box and filters, so typing a word finds every time it came up. Paper Trail, in the More tab, shows every student's log together in one feed you can filter. The Class and Roster screens also have a search bar you can type or speak into.
Does the app work without wifi?: Yes. Add it to your home screen and the class-logging screen keeps working when the school Wi-Fi doesn't. Your roster and every logged interaction live on your device, and any save made offline waits in an outbox and syncs automatically once you are back online, so nothing is lost to a dead zone.
What is Snap-Grade?: Photograph a worksheet and Snap-Grade marks it up, gives you a grade you can adjust, and can read a short private audio note through your earbud or play it for the student. Before the photo ever leaves your phone, it is scanned on the device and every student name it finds is permanently blacked out at the pixel level, so only the scrubbed image is uploaded for grading.

Parents, plans, and paperwork6

How do I contact a parent in one tap?: Tap the parent tile on a student's card to text right away, or press and hold it to choose Text, Call, or Email — the number and address come from that student's own page. One tap can also draft all three at once — a text, an email, and a phone-call script — built from that student's recent logged interactions, so you can pick whichever fits the family.
Does anything get sent to a parent without me checking it first?: No. A draft is only generated when you tap for one, you review and can edit every word, and the app then opens your phone's own text, call, or email app with the message filled in — you tap send, not the app. Behind the scenes, any logged text used to build the draft has student names replaced with anonymized tokens before it reaches the AI; the parent's own child's name is filled back in afterward.
How do IEP or 504 accommodations get onto a student's card from a photo?: Pick the student first, then snap the accommodations page — the app scans it on your phone and asks you to confirm whose plan it is if it cannot tell with confidence; it never guesses when more than one student could match. That same on-device scan blacks out the student's own name, every other roster student's name, ID numbers, birthdates, and email addresses before the page is read, and the accommodation list comes back for you to review and save.
How do medical alerts show up on a student's card?: Snap a photo of the nurse's health-alert email or spreadsheet and the app reads it, matches each row to a student on your roster, and adds a red medical flag to their card once you confirm it. Your phone replaces roster students' names with short codes inside the image before it is sent; if it cannot do that with confidence, nothing is sent until you decide. One honest limit: a school-wide health email can still show other classes' students' names, since the phone can only code names from your own roster.
Does Snap-Grade change a student's course grade?: No. A Snap-Grade score files onto the student's record as its own assignment, kept separate from their course grade, because one exit ticket or worksheet is not a course grade on its own.
What happens at an IEP/504 meeting or a counselor conversation because of this?: You walk in with a detailed, time-stamped record instead of a recollection. One tap turns the logged interactions into a formatted 504/IEP report or a page you can hand to a counselor, a 504 or IEP team, or a special-education case manager.

Your students' privacy10

Where does my students' data actually live — on my phone or in the cloud?: Almost everything lives on your own phone: full names, photos, parent contact info, ID numbers, IEP/504 and medical notes, and your written notes, all encrypted by your device's own operating system. The cloud backup only ever receives a first name and last initial, an anonymous student code, and interaction timestamps — never a full name, photo, or parent contact. The device is where the real record lives; the cloud is a thin, de-identified backup.
What can the AI see about my students, and what can't it see?: For anything typed or spoken, the AI never sees a student's name — your phone swaps every name for a code like STU-001 before sending, and only your phone turns the codes back into names when the reply comes back. For a photo you deliberately ask it to read, like an attendance sheet, the name is the data being read, so your phone codes or blacks out the names in the pixels first — for every photo flow except a first roster import, which has no roster yet to check names against.
How does the photo name-scrubbing work?: For attendance sheets, gradebook photos, and the nurse's list, your phone reads the photo on the device, matches each printed name against your roster, and permanently replaces the name's pixels with a white box and a short code like S1 or S2 — not a sticker on top; the original pixels are gone from the outbound file. Any name-like text it cannot confidently match is blacked out solid, and the code-to-student map stays on your phone.
What exactly does the cloud backup store, and is it encrypted?: A first name and last initial, an anonymous student code, and interaction timestamps — never a full name, photo, parent contact, ID number, or IEP/504/medical note. It is encrypted at rest with AES-256, and everything moving between your phone, the servers, and the AI travels over TLS 1.2 or higher.
Does the app listen through my microphone on its own?: No, and it never starts on its own — but there are two ways to turn it on and they behave differently, so here is both. On the Class screen you tap the listening pill to start Agentic Angel, and it stays on while you teach, until you tap it again or say “stop listening.” The screen shows a green LIVE state the whole time the microphone is open, and there is a hold state for stepping out of the room. The separate voice panel on the capture screen is hold-to-talk: the microphone there is open only while your thumb is down on the button, and it closes the instant you let go. Either way, what it is listening for is a student’s name, and your phone swaps every name for a code like STU-001 before anything is sent.
Does the app store the actual audio of what I say?: No. On devices that transcribe on the device itself — iPhone with iOS 17+, and most up-to-date Chrome, Android, and Chromebook devices — your voice never leaves the phone. On older browsers the browser's own speech service turns your words into text, and even then Teacher Supreme never stores or receives the audio, only the text.
Can my principal read my log?: No. Your interaction log is private, and that is enforced in the database itself — every read and write reduces to a single check of whether the record belongs to your own account, so there is no key that unlocks another account's records for management to view. If your school licenses the district product, admins see aggregate trends across classrooms, never your individual entries.
Is student data ever sold or used to train AI?: No. The product never sells student data and never uses it to train advertising or third-party models. On the AI side it uses only Google Gemini's paid API, whose published enterprise terms state that content submitted through it is not used to train Google's models; the free consumer version is never used.
Is Teacher Supreme FERPA-safe?: It is built to be FERPA-safe by design: student names are turned into codes before any text reaches the AI, every teacher's records are isolated from every other teacher's at the database level, and every change to a student record is logged. It is meant to operate under FERPA's school-official exception, which a district grants by naming Teacher Supreme in its annual notification and putting the terms in a written agreement — the district stays the data controller throughout.
What could I tell a parent about how their child's data is handled?: That their child's full name and any photos stay on your own phone, not on a company server; that the only thing reaching Teacher Supreme's servers is a first name, last initial, timestamped notes, and an anonymous code, encrypted at rest; that nothing about their child is used to train Google's AI models, because only the paid API tier is used and its terms prohibit that; and that you can export or delete everything about their child at any time.

Money, and leaving whenever you want4

How much does Teacher Supreme cost — Basic vs. Plus?: Basic is $5 a month per class. Plus is $10 a month per class. Each class covers up to 50 students, and you only pay for the classes you actually teach — there is no separate account fee on top. Three classes on Basic is $15 a month; three on Plus is $30.
What's the real difference between Basic and Plus?: Basic covers logging by voice or tap, same-day parent emails, a daily teacher report, a single-student PDF, a counselor weekly report, behavior trend charts, Smart Pattern Alerts, and CSV export of your own data. Plus adds the paperwork and coaching tools: In-the-Moment Mentor, Snap-Grade, bulk and weekly parent reports drafted for you, conference-packet exports, Sub Mode, gradebook import, attendance by photo, IEP/504 and nurse-list photo snaps, seating-chart import, lesson-plan ideas, test-prep questions, and Ask Angel. The 50-student cap is the same on both.
Will I get charged automatically after the trial without warning?: No, and it is not possible. We do not collect a credit card to start, and we do not collect one during the trial unless you choose to subscribe early — so there is no card on file to charge when day 28 arrives. The 28 free days are deliberate: use it with your own students and decide for yourself whether it is worth $5 a class. If it is, subscribe any time — early, or when the trial ends. If it is not, do nothing: the paid features simply stop, nothing is billed, and your own record is still yours to export.
Can I export all my data, and what's actually in the export?: Yes — under More → Archive, one tap downloads a single backup file with everything stored on your device: your full roster (names, photos, parent contacts), every logged interaction, behavior and attendance records, paper-trail notes, and seating charts. On Basic and up, More → Export also gives one-tap CSV downloads of your roster and your logged interactions, built entirely on your own phone.

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Still wondering something? support@teachersupreme.com · The full security brief