Software for instructors beyond the standard classroom
The tooling for directors, coaches, and advisers who run the thing outside the graded course.
A theatre director, a CTE instructor, a varsity coach, a club adviser, and a music director all lead something real — a production, a season, a program, a squad — but the software they are handed was built for the gradebook-and-lesson-plan teacher. This platform is built for the other role: the instructor who owns an activity rather than a course, who needs a roster that does not require a class section, an eligibility decision that does not require a transcript lookup, and a way to reach consented guardians without an email blast to the whole school. Here is exactly what is built and what it does not yet do.
The director’s-note engine, the rehearsal planning surfaces, the eligibility engine, and the activity roster are built today. The dispatch path for guardian notifications is built but honest-off — the page names that plainly. The living-promptbook reader is early access.
What is built
The capabilities below are code that exists and runs today. The ones marked “early access” are built but not yet ready for general use. “Dispatch honest-off” means the routing logic is built and the dispatch wire to an outbound provider is not yet connected.
The theatre director’s-note engine
A director records notes scoped to a scene, an actor, or a rehearsal — the note carries the target, the text, and the rehearsal reference. Distribution follows a closed lifecycle: a note is created, assigned to the relevant recipient set, and resolved. The recipient set is drawn from consented guardian records through the record-notify chokepoint — a note on a minor’s performance never dispatches freely. The engine is built; the dispatch wire is honest-off by construction (named below). Shipped
Theatre rehearsal planning surfaces
Rehearsals are planned with a date, a call time, a scene list, and the cast and crew who need to be present. The planning surface generates a call sheet from the roster, respects the eligibility state of each student, and allows a director to annotate the run with notes that persist into the director’s-note engine. These surfaces are built on the same activity-roster and scheduling spine that backs the broader platform. Shipped
Academic eligibility engine
The eligibility engine answers a single, deterministic question: is this student currently eligible to participate in this activity? It evaluates the inputs the school provides — grade thresholds, standing flags, term windows — and returns a clean yes/no decision with the reason. No transcript parsing, no grade-book read beyond what the school has wired. A coach or director can query eligibility for a roster entry and get an auditable answer before posting a call sheet or a starting lineup. Shipped
Activity and production rosters
A roster for an activity — a theatre production, a sports team, a club, a CTE cohort — lives on opaque student references, census-neutral. The student’s name and identifying details are resolved at the point of display for the instructor; the underlying record is the same consented student record the platform shares across tools. Studio and photography rep roles are walled out at the server; a rep session never sees an activity roster. The rep/subject walls and the single-school privacy wall are enforced at the data layer, not the UI layer. Shipped
Guardian communication path (dispatch honest-off)
The communication architecture routes outbound messages to consented guardian recipients only. Minors are default-deny: a message to a student’s household reaches only the guardians who have been identified and consented through the record-notify chokepoint. The routing logic and the recipient-resolution step are built. The actual dispatch wire — the outbound provider that carries the message — is not provisioned today. No provider is wired; no message leaves the system. This is honest-off by construction, named here rather than buried in fine print. Built — dispatch honest-off
The freeschoolplays director surface and living promptbook
The freeschoolplays director surface is where a director works with a script: scene breakdown, blocking notes, and the director’s annotation layer that sits on top of the canonical text. The promptbook presents the script with the director’s notes visible, scoped by scene and by actor. The landing and the director-note engine are built and available. The fully functional reader — the interactive in-browser promptbook with Yjs-backed real-time annotation sync — is in early access; it is not ready for general use today. Early access
How the pieces fit together
The activity roster, the eligibility engine, and the director’s-note engine all share the same consented student record the platform maintains for the school. An instructor does not provision a separate roster: the students for a production or a team are drawn from the school’s existing records on opaque references. The instructor sees names and details; the record layer holds opaque identifiers; and the single-school privacy wall means a student’s record from one school is never visible across a tenant boundary.
The eligibility engine sits between the activity roster and any decision that depends on academic standing. A director posting a rehearsal call sheet, a coach filing a travel roster, or an adviser scheduling a club event can query eligibility for any roster member and receive a deterministic answer. The engine evaluates the school-provided criteria; it does not interpret grades itself. It is a pure decision surface, not a grade-book reader.
The director’s-note engine connects to the rehearsal planning surface directly: a rehearsal creates the context (the scene, the cast, the date) and the note lives in that context. Notes are scoped so a director can review all notes for a single actor across all rehearsals, all notes for a single scene, or the full set from one session. The distribution step — the point at which a note might go to a consented guardian — is a separate, gated action. Nothing dispatches automatically.
The freeschoolplays living-promptbook surface is where the director’s annotation work takes permanent form: the blocking notes, the director’s cuts, and the performance history for a production. This surface runs on its own domain (freeschoolplays.com) and is linked from here because it is the built-out destination for the theatre director’s work. The reader is in early access; the director-note layer feeding it is the shipped foundation.
What is in progress and what is planned
These capabilities are not presented as available today. They are named so an instructor or administrator considering this platform can see the direction and the honest state of each item.
Living-promptbook reader (fully functional)
The interactive in-browser promptbook — where a director works with the canonical script text, sees their own director’s annotations inline, and optionally shares a read-view with a stage manager — is the next major surface being completed under freeschoolplays.com. The Yjs-backed real-time sync layer is in development. The reader will surface here when it is ready for general use. In progress
Guardian dispatch provider wiring
The recipient-resolution and consent-gate logic for the guardian communication path is built. The outbound dispatch provider — the wire that carries a message to a confirmed guardian recipient — is not yet provisioned. Connecting it is a planned step. Until it is wired, no outbound message leaves the system and the dispatch seam returns an honest error rather than a silent failure. Planned
CTE and career-tech program roster management
A CTE cohort roster has slightly different membership rules than a production or a sports team: multi-year enrollment, credential-track association, and work-site placement tracking. The activity-roster spine supports these patterns; a dedicated CTE roster surface that surfaces the program-specific fields is planned. Planned
Music director tooling
A music director leads a band, an orchestra, or a choir the same way a theatre director leads a production: with a roster, a rehearsal plan, and notes attached to individual performers. The freeschoolmusic director surfaces (ensemble roster, rehearsal notes, performance record) are planned to extend the same engine that backs the theatre director tools. Named here because the audience is the same; built here when the surfaces are ready. Planned
Activity scheduling on the slot engine
Tryout scheduling, audition slots, rehearsal blocks, and club meeting times all fit the fixed-slot seat model of the schedule.software engine. The connection between the activity roster and the slot-booking engine — so a director can post audition slots and roster members can claim them directly — is a planned integration surface. Planned
Gradebook and core-subject coursework
Gradebook management, lesson planning, and core-subject coursework tools are not in scope for this platform. That audience is teach.software. instructor.software is the activity and program layer; it does not duplicate the core classroom tools. Not in scope
Who uses each part
The director’s-note engine and the rehearsal planning surfaces are tools for a theatre director or performing-arts lead. The instructor has the note-creation and rehearsal-authoring role; a stage manager may have a read role on the call sheet; no student or minor has an authoring role on director notes. The distribution step — when a note is being routed to a guardian — is a separate, gated action taken by the director, not an automatic post-save dispatch.
The eligibility engine is a read surface for any instructor who runs an activity that conditions participation on academic standing: a coach, a club adviser, a director checking cast eligibility before posting a performance roster. The engine does not expose grade data; it exposes a decision and the criterion that drove it. Grade-book access for the underlying computation stays in the school’s own staff role, not in the instructor’s activity view.
The activity roster is available to any instructor role that has been granted the relevant activity. A studio representative or a photography account manager is hard-denied at the server; those roles never see an activity roster or a director’s note. The single-school wall means an instructor at one school never sees a roster entry from another school, even if the platform serves both.
Student data on these surfaces is always minor-consent-gated. Activity rosters hold opaque references; the display layer resolves names for the instructor with the school’s own consented records. Guardian communication resolves recipients from the consented guardian record, not from a freeform address list. An instructor cannot add a contact that is not in the consented record.
This platform is not the day-to-day tool for a standard K-12 classroom teacher working through a syllabus, a lesson sequence, and a gradebook. That role is served by a different product. The split is intentional: the activity-and-program layer and the classroom layer serve different workflows, different rhythms, and different data relationships.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a replacement for the school’s existing student information system?
No. This platform reads from the consented student record the school maintains; it does not replace or mirror a student information system. The activity roster holds opaque student references that resolve at display time. An instructor does not manage enrollment records, transcripts, or official grade data here.
Can a director actually send messages to parents through this system today?
The routing logic and the consent-gate are built: the system knows which guardians are consented for which students, and it resolves the recipient set correctly. The outbound dispatch wire — the provider that carries the message — is not connected today. No message leaves the system until that wire is provisioned. We say this plainly rather than describing it as “available.”
Is the living promptbook on freeschoolplays.com ready to use?
The landing and the director-note engine that feeds the promptbook are built and available. The fully functional in-browser reader — the interactive layer where a director works with the script text and sees annotations inline — is in early access. It is being completed and is not yet ready for general use. The freeschoolplays.com site has current information on availability.
Does the eligibility engine read the student’s grades directly?
No. The eligibility engine takes school-provided criteria and the outputs the school has wired into the platform — grade thresholds, standing flags, term windows — and returns a decision. It does not parse transcripts or read a live gradebook. The school controls what inputs feed the engine; the engine returns a deterministic answer from those inputs.
Is there a separate sign-in for instructors?
An instructor logs in through the same platform the school uses. The platform resolves the instructor’s role and surfaces the activity tools their role allows. There is no separate instructor-only portal.
Can a coach use this for a sports team even if the school also uses it for theatre?
Yes. Activity rosters are scoped by activity. A football roster and a spring musical cast are separate activity rosters with separate instructor assignments. The eligibility engine evaluates the same eligibility criteria for both; the note engine is scoped so a theatre director’s notes on an actor do not appear in a coach’s view.
Is student biometric or facial-recognition data collected on these surfaces?
No. Activity rosters use opaque student references. The platform does not collect, store, or process facial recognition or biometric data on activity or production roster surfaces. Guardian communication resolves recipients from the consented record; no biometric data is involved in that path.
What does “honest-off” mean?
It means the feature or integration is built but not live: the code exists and the architecture has the seam, but a dependency — an outbound provider, a persistence binding, a third-party connection — is not yet wired. “Honest-off” is how this platform names those seams rather than presenting early work as finished.
Related tools and platforms
teach.software
The platform for the standard K-12 classroom teacher: gradebook, lesson planning, and coursework management. If you work through a syllabus and a grade roster, this is the tool.
freeschoolplays.com
The theatre vertical and the home of the living promptbook: free school play scripts, director’s-note surfaces, rehearsal tools, and the growing script library for K-12 productions.
schedule.software
Rehearsal scheduling, tryout slots, audition booking, and activity scheduling on the fixed-slot engine. The slot-identity model handles the cases where an overlap-ladder calendar falls short.
educator.management
Staff and professional-development management for schools: certification tracking, PD hours, observation workflows, and evaluation cycles. This is the HR layer, not the activity layer.
Student Records
The official student record the whole platform reads from: roster, guardians, terms, and the single-school privacy wall that activity rosters and eligibility decisions depend on.
The full platform
The complete platform overview: yearbook, picture day, student records, family communication, and school management. instructor.software is the activity and program layer of this platform.
What is built, what is honest-off, and what is planned
The theatre director’s-note engine, the rehearsal planning surfaces, the academic eligibility engine, and the activity and production roster are built and available today. The guardian communication path — the routing logic, the consent gate, and the recipient resolution — is built; the outbound dispatch provider is not yet connected and is named honest-off rather than described as available. The freeschoolplays director-note layer is built; the fully functional living-promptbook reader is early access, in active completion. CTE program roster management, music director tooling, activity scheduling integration, and the full guardian dispatch wire are planned. Gradebook and core-subject coursework are deliberately out of scope: that is teach.software, a different tool for a different role. We name all of this plainly.