🎹 Teacher

The Teacher Guide

Welcome! Your admin created your account — this guide gets you teaching. One thing before anything else: set your availability. Until you do, the school cannot schedule a single student with you.

1 · Your first login

Your admin gives you a username and password. Go to spoteca.com/login (or your school's portal link), sign in, and you'll land on your teacher dashboard. Forgot your password? Use Forgot your password? on the sign-in page, or ask your admin.

Your dashboard — today's lessons, your students, quick links.

Your sidebar: Overview · My Schedule · My Calendar · Students · My Curriculum · Lesson Notes · Reports · My Payments · Messages · Account Settings. Stuck on anything? Tap the ? button (bottom corner) and choose Ask AI — it answers in your language and knows how your school is set up.

2 · Set your availability — do this first ⚠️

Sidebar → My Schedule → “My Availability” tab

⚠️ Why this is step oneThe admin books students only into slots you've marked as available. An empty grid = you're invisible to the scheduler = no students, no lessons, no pay.

Open the grid

My Schedule has two tabs: Weekly Lessons and My Availability. Open the second. You'll see a weekly grid, Monday to Saturday, from 8:00 to 22:00 in 15-minute rows.

Paint your free hours

Click a slot to toggle it, or click-and-drag to paint whole blocks green in one stroke. Mark every window you're genuinely willing to teach.

Save

Hit Save availability. Done — the admin can now book students with you.

⚡ Shortcut: Import school hoursIf your school runs fixed hours, press Import school hours instead of painting a whole week by hand — it fills the grid with the school's opening hours, and you then remove the times you don't work and add any extra. It merges, so anything you already painted stays. Review, then save. Nothing is saved until you do.

ℹ️ Your hours always winThe school's hours are only a starting point — nothing is scheduled against them. Once you save, your grid is the only thing the scheduler reads. If the school changes its hours later, your availability is left exactly as you set it; re-import only if you want to pick up the change.

👥 Your admin may set this for youOffice staff can paint your availability from their side, and you'll get a notification when they do. Open this tab any time to review or change it — you always have the final say over your own grid. Lessons already booked show red and are locked for both of you; ask the office to reschedule if one needs to move.

Available — you marked it free Booked — a lesson exists here (locked) Unavailable

Availability empty — A new teacher's empty availability grid.

Availability painted — Drag to paint blocks — here Mon–Fri, 4pm–8pm.

Booked slots are protected — once a student occupies a slot it turns red and you can't accidentally un-mark it. To free it, the admin must move the lesson first.
Update anytime — new semester, new life schedule? Repaint and save. Existing lessons are never touched by availability edits.
Going away? Don't unpaint your grid for holidays — that's what absences are for. Tell your admin; they'll log the absence and handle rescheduling of affected lessons properly (see the Admin guide).

If your school sets your hours for you

ℹ️ Fixed-schedule schoolsSome schools assign teachers fixed working hours (e.g. every weekday 15:00–20:00). In that case your grid may already be filled when you first log in — the school imported it centrally. Verify it matches your reality; you can still adjust and save if your admin agrees.

3 · Your schedule & calendar

Back on the Weekly Lessons tab, your recurring week appears as the admin enrolls students: student name, subject, exact time range, and room. It repeats weekly — no rebooking needed.

📅 Classes that are not weeklyTwo kinds of class cannot be drawn on a weekly grid, so they are listed underneath it with the dates they really run on, each naming its own room: a session pack, which meets on hand-picked dates, and a one-time class or masterclass, which meets once. A one-time class stays there until the end of its own day and then drops off the schedule — it has already happened, so it is not part of your week ahead. You can still find it, and its register, on My Calendar by stepping back to the week it was held.

My Calendar shows the same lessons on real dates — including one-off changes: reschedules, cancellations, group sessions and school events. When in doubt about a specific date, trust the calendar.

🕘 Times follow your school's clockIf your school has set a time zone, every time you see — your weekly grid, your calendar, attendance, and the timestamps on your pay — is shown in the school's own zone, whatever device or country you are reading from. If your school has not set one, times follow your own device clock, exactly as before. Only your owner can change it.

👥 A group class can meet more than once a weekA group you teach may appear on two or three different days — that is one class with several weekly meetings, each with its own time and its own room, not several classes. Your register lists every one of them.

💡 Lesson remindersSpoteca sends automatic reminders before lessons (and can notify you when your schedule changes). Enable push notifications when your browser asks.

4 · Your students

Sidebar → Students — everyone assigned to you, with subject, level and plan. Open a student to see their profile, lesson history, attendance, notes trail and curriculum progress. This is your prep page before each lesson.

📄 Reports, and the students you only see in a classSidebar → Reports lists every student you teach — including the ones you have no private lesson with, because they sit in one of your group classes. Their report is built the same way: their attendance in your class, the notes you wrote for them, and the chips under their name showing what they are enrolled in. If your school has turned the preference off, those chips show only your own subjects. Either way you read only the notes you wrote — another teacher's notes on the same student are never shown to you.

🔒 Private notesOn each student card, Add note opens your private staff notes — confidential observations only you and the school's admins can see (never the student or their parents). Use them for things like scheduling issues or how a student is coping — separate from the lesson notes that parents read. This is different from the Lesson Notes section below, which is shared with the family.

5 · Attendance

Mark each occurrence Present / Absent / Late / Excused right after the lesson (from the lesson, your calendar, or the attendance page). Accurate attendance matters: it feeds the student's record, the school's early-warning flags, and — on pay-per-attendance plans — your pay.

👥 Group classes: one registerA group class has a single register, the same one the office sees — mark each student Present or Absent per session. It appears once the class has been activated, and each student's group attendance shows in their own attendance history.

📎 Files on a class note, and who hears about itThe class note takes attachments — a worksheet, a backing track, a photo of the board — exactly as a private lesson note does. Add them under the note; every student marked Present gets a copy. Marking a register also notifies each student that they were marked present or absent, the same message a private lesson sends, and records who marked it in the school's Audit Log. Re-opening a register and saving it again notifies nobody: only a change is announced.

6 · Lesson notes & homework

Sidebar → Lesson Notes

After each lesson, write a short note — it's the feedback loop parents love and the reason they keep paying:

Content — what you covered.
Topics — tag the areas touched (technique, theory…).
Homework — what to practice for next time.
Rating — a quick performance score for the session.
Attachments — sheet music PDFs, reference recordings.
Attendance note (optional) — a one-line note about the session itself, e.g. "arrived 15 minutes late". It appears beside that lesson on the student's calendar.

Writing a lesson note with homework and rating.

Students and their parents see notes in their own portals immediately.

The page lists every lesson you marked Present in the last 90 days, and opens on Needs notes — the lessons still waiting on you, with a running count. Switch to All lessons to revisit notes you've already written. Nothing is created until you save, so a lesson simply stays on the list until it has a real note.

👥 Notes for a group classYour group classes are on this page too. Write the note once for the whole class — every field is shared — and change it for any one student who needs something different. Each student's note says which class it came from. On your Students page a class is its own card: open it to set the class's progress once, then adjust the exceptions.

💡 Two minutes, big impactA two-line note after every lesson is the single strongest retention tool your school has. Make it a habit.

7 · Curriculum & progress tracking

Sidebar → My Curriculum

Your school defined a curriculum — levels, skill domains, skills, repertoire and badges. You drive each student along it:

Skills — mark a student's skills as In progress → Mastered as they develop.
Repertoire — assign pieces from the school library (or ad-hoc); track Assigned → Learning → Polishing → Performed with a progress bar.
Levels — move students up when they're ready; record exam results as assessments.
Badges — many award themselves (practice streaks, pieces performed); others you or the admin award manually.

Everything you mark appears live on the student's Journey page — their progress map — and in printable progress reports for parents.

Teacher curriculum — Tracking skills and pieces per student.

Exams & assessments

On a student's Progress page, Exams & assessments records every test that student sits — yours and the ones they sit somewhere else. You can add an exam before it happens and come back afterwards to fill in the grade.

Two things are asked, and they are independent of each other:

Who sets it — We set it (your school runs it) or Their school (somebody else runs it; name the school). An exam set elsewhere takes no room, no teacher and no slot from you — it is a reason to book more lessons before it, not fewer.
When it is — a date ahead of you is a plan, a date behind you is a record. Both are allowed.

The status looks after itself: an exam still to come is planned, and once it has a result or a score it is done. The only one you set by hand is Missed it. Use Edit on a row to add the grade later — words (“Distinction”), a number with the mark it is out of (16 / 20), or both. Always give the scale when you give a number: 16 means nothing next to another school's mark without it.

ℹ️ Only your subjectsYou can file an exam only for a subject you actually teach that student. If they also study something else with another teacher, that subject is not in your list — ask an admin, who can record any subject.

Your Overview shows Exams coming up: your students' planned exams for the next 30 days with a countdown (“Tomorrow”, “in 9 days”), and Needs grade on anything whose day has passed without a result. Tap a row to go straight to that student's Progress page.

8 · Your pay

Sidebar → My Payments

Your monthly earnings are calculated automatically from each plan's rate basis — a monthly rate, a fixed amount per billing period or term, per scheduled lesson, or per attended lesson (your school may set custom rates per teacher). See the month's breakdown per student/class, deductions if any, payment status, and history. On pay-per-attendance plans, only sessions marked Present count — one more reason to keep attendance accurate.

🕑 Your HistorySidebar → My History lists everything in your teaching, newest first: each lesson you gave and its register (a group class appears once, with its attendance counted), your absences, your pay — bill raised and paid — and students who started or stopped with you. Filter by student, subject, kind and dates, or export to CSV. If your school lets teachers see student payments, your students' invoices and payments appear here too.

9 · Messages & account settings

Messages — chat directly with your students, their parents, or the admin. Everything in one thread per person, with read receipts.

Account Settings — your name, email, phone, address, photo, bio and password. Changing your email asks for your current password and sends a confirmation link to the new address; nothing changes until you click it. Your bio is visible to students on their "My Teacher" page — make it warm.

FAQ

I set availability but have no students yet.

That's the admin's move now — they enroll students into your green slots. Your part is done; maybe give them a nudge. 🙂

Can I block a single date (doctor's appointment)?

Availability is your recurring weekly pattern. For one-off dates, ask the admin to log an absence — affected lessons get rescheduled properly and parents are informed.

A student wants to move a lesson.

If the school allows it, the student (or a parent) requests it from their own Schedule page and the office confirms it. Permanent slot changes also go through the admin, who checks your grid and the room.

I've been given someone else's group class.

When the office changes a class's teacher, the students, register and billing carry on unchanged — the class simply appears on your schedule, calendar and Lesson Notes from then on.

Why is a slot red when I never marked it available?

Red means booked. Group classes and events can be scheduled onto your calendar by the admin directly — they don't require individual availability.

My pay looks off.

Check attendance first (especially on pay-per-attendance plans), then ask the admin — they see the same per-lesson breakdown and any deductions with notes.

Next → The Student & Parent Guide