SchoolFront Support

 

Teachers

Getting Started as a Teacher in the SchoolFront System

SchoolFront gives teachers secure access to powerful tools that help them to plan and teach, through foster communication and collaboration, to capture critical operational data and student information, and to report on all of the great work they do.

This section of the Online Help provides information for teachers who are just getting started in the SchoolFront system.

Note: Teachers must be added to SchoolFront by an Administrator user before they can login. When a teacher is added to the system, the system automatically generates a unique username for the teacher and creates an initial password that the teacher can use when they first login. The Administrator user must give the teacher the username and password so that they can login for the first time.

  

Important First Steps

Make sure your computer has the right software to run SchoolFront optimally and get to know the system a little before you begin managing student and academic information in they system.

Manage Courses and Enrollment in SchoolFront

Course and enrollment management is optional for Administrator users because teachers can be empowered to handle their own course management and enrollment in SchoolFront.

  1. Add Courses and Enroll Students in Courses
  2. Define Course Seating Charts

Manage and Track Grading

SchoolFront allows teachers to define a unique grading structure for each of their courses, to add graded coursework to the system, and to log student grades for each graded assignment. Grading structures are defined per course and tell the system how to calculate the students' final grades for each course.

Once grading structure is defined, coursework is entered, and student grades are logged, the system calculates student averages based on the grading structure defined by the teacher.

  1. Add Courses and Enroll Students in Courses
  2. Define Course Grading Structure
  3. Set Grade Ranges
  4. Set Default Homework Date Range
  5. Add Graded Coursework to the system:
  6. Capture Student Grades in the System
  7. Manage Your Grading Comment List
  8. Add Comments to Student Grades 

Track Student Attendance

SchoolFront allows teachers to track student attendance in a variety of difference ways to accommodate all teaching styles and scenarios.

For example, at the beginning of the school year when the teacher doesn't yet know student names, they can take attendance using the student seating chart. Alternatively if the teacher knows student names and wants to manage attendance from the same screen that they manage daily coursework, they can take attendance from the Daily Planner section of SchoolFront.

If a teacher needs a substitute teacher for multiple days and the substitute cannot login to SchoolFront, the substitute can take attendance outside of the system and then the teacher can log all of the attendance at once in SchoolFront in the Attendance section.

  1. Add Courses and Enroll Students in Courses
  2. Define Course Seating Charts
  3. Log Attendance:

Prepare for A Substitute Teacher to Take Your Place

If you will only be out for a short period of time and want to enable a substitute teacher to take attendance and capture grading without having to login to SchoolFront, you can create printouts for them to use while you are out and then transfer the information into the system when you return.

Enable a Substitute Teacher to Capture Attendance Outside of SchoolFront
  1. Create a Printout so that a Substitute Can Log Attendance Outside of SchoolFront
  2. Add the Attendance Captured by the Substitute to the System
Enable a Substitute Teacher to Capture Grading Outside of SchoolFront
  1. Create a Printout so that a Substitute Can Capture Grades Outside of SchoolFront
  2. Add the Grades Captured by the Substitute to the System

If you will be out of class for a longer period of time, it makes sense to have the long-term substitute teacher added to SchoolFront as a staff member and trained on the system rather than having them gather grading and attendance information outside of the system and then you having to transpose the information.

Once they are in the system, you can temporarily add them to the teaching team for your course and they will have the same abilities and access to your course information as other team teachers.

  1. Contact an Administrator User from Your School and Request That They Add Your Sub to the System
  2. Add the Substitute Teacher to Your Course Teaching Team
  3. Direct Your Sub to the Teacher Getting Started Section of the SchoolFront Online Help

Communicate with Parents Using Mail-Merge

SchoolFront gives teacher users the ability to mass-create personalized letters with or without student academic and attendance information for parents/guardians.

Note: If a student's parent/guardian is not in the system, mail-merge will not work.

  1. Add Courses and Enroll Students in Courses
  2. Ensure that Parent Information is Available for Your Student(s)
  3. Use SchoolFront Mail-merge Capability to Communicate

Manage Student Discipline in SchoolFront

SchoolFront provides a means for administrator users and teachers to manage and track the disciplinary measures they exercise with students and to view student's discipline records in the system. SchoolFront makes management of disciplinary measures a collaborative endeavor, allowing school staff members to view and process incidents in a single, central, and up-to-date directory.

SchoolFront Reporting

A great deal of useful and insightful school and student information is aggregated by teachers and other school staff using the SchoolFront system. Reports are an easy way to view and understand some of the information collected by the school.

Ensure that Students Can Access their Own Information in SchoolFront

Use the Daily Planner Section of SchoolFront

Once you have setup all of your courses, enrollment, and grading structure in SchoolFront, the Daily Planner section gives you a simple daily view of each of your courses and allows you to manage most of your daily activities (including attendance tracking, coursework management, and student information look-up) from a single location in the system.

System Information and Support

The SchoolFront Support Team uses the SchoolFront Homepage and this Support Portal to communicate with and provide support to all users of the system.