Privacy Policy

Effective August 3, 2026. First published July 28, 2026.

What changed on August 3: we spelled out how we handle emergencies and legal demands for information, and corrected the list of services we rely on.

What we collect

Your account. When you join, we collect your email address and a password, or your Google account email if you sign in with Google. Passwords are handled by our authentication provider and are never visible to us.

Your profile. Whatever you choose to add: your name, role, grade levels, subjects, location, a photo, and a short bio. All of it is optional except a display name.

Things you post. Forum threads and replies, direct messages to other members, mentorship requests and applications, resource submissions, and feedback you send us. Forum posts are public; direct messages are visible only to you and the person you message.

Your saved tool data. If you are signed in, the personal tools (Teacher Journal, Comment Log, Growth Plan, Rubric Maker, Self-Observation, and Spin the Wheel) save your work to your account so it follows you between devices. The Student Name Game and the Seating Chart Maker are different: they stay on your device unless you turn on their sync toggle. Saved data is protected so that only your account can read it. It is not shared with other members, and it is deliberately walled off from the site admin too. Your journal is yours.

Forms. If you use the contact or consulting forms, we receive the name, email, and message you type so we can reply.

Newsletter. If you subscribe, we store your email address. Every issue includes an unsubscribe link that works immediately.

Usage statistics. We use Google Analytics to understand which pages help teachers most (page views, rough location, device type). This is aggregate information; we do not use it to build profiles of individual visitors.

Student information

Some tools are built to hold classroom details, like the Student Name Game and the Seating Chart Maker. When you are signed in, information for those tools stays only on your device by default. It is not uploaded to your account unless you turn on the "Sync across devices" toggle on those tools. The toggle is off by default. With it off, student information lives only in your browser.

Please keep students out of everything else. Outside of those classroom tools, this site is not a place for student information. Do not put student names, photos, or anything that could identify a student into forum posts, direct messages, mentorship conversations, resource submissions, or your profile. Do not share confidential student information (grades, discipline, health, or family details), and do not share the contents of education plans such as IEPs or 504 plans. If we find content that identifies a student, we will remove it. Our Terms of Use say the same thing, because it matters that much.

A practical suggestion from teachers: first names or initials are all these tools need, and "one of my ninth graders" is all a forum post or mentor needs. Student records are covered by laws like FERPA, and your school or district may also have its own rules about student information in outside services. Those rules come first.

How we use what we collect

• To run the site: sign you in, save your work, deliver your messages, and match mentors with new teachers.
• To email you the things you asked for: confirmation and password emails, replies to mentorship activity, the newsletter if you subscribed.
• To improve the site, using aggregate statistics about what gets used.
• To keep the community safe, including reviewing reports of behavior that breaks our Terms of Use.

What we never do

• We never sell your information. Not to anyone, not in any form.
• We never show ads or share your information with advertisers.
• We never read your private tool data or your journal.
• We never email you things you did not sign up for.

Services we rely on

Like nearly every website, we use a few trusted providers to operate. They process data only to provide their service to us:

• Supabase hosts our database, sign-in, and file storage. Your account data and saved work live here, protected by per-account access rules.
• Google provides optional Google sign-in and Google Analytics, and serves the site's fonts.
• Resend sends our transactional email and newsletter.
• Tawk.to powers the live chat bubble shown to visitors who are not signed in. If you start a chat, it goes to one of our support staff. Signed-in members do not see it and it collects nothing from them.
• EmailJS delivers consulting form submissions to our inbox.
• Netlify hosts and serves the website itself.
• GoDaddy provides our domain name and our email service.

Cookies and local storage

We use browser storage to keep you signed in and to remember preferences (Ex. which dashboard is yours). Google Analytics sets cookies to count visits. We do not use advertising cookies. If you block analytics cookies, the site still works completely.

You can also turn our analytics off entirely, right here:

Turn off analytics in this browser

This choice is saved in the browser you are using right now, so set it again if you switch browsers or devices. Everything on the site works exactly the same either way.

When we would share information

We do not sell or rent your information, and we do not share it with advertisers. Beyond the service providers listed above, we would disclose information only in the narrow situations below.

If the law requires it. We respond to legal demands that are valid, properly issued, and served on us, such as a subpoena or an order from a court with jurisdiction. Unless we are legally barred from doing so, we make a reasonable effort to notify the affected member before we respond, so they have a chance to object, and where the law allows we may ask the requesting party to cover the reasonable cost of finding and producing the records.

In an emergency. The Faculty Lounge is a technology platform, not an educational institution, an employer, or a mandatory reporter, and we do not monitor private messages. But if we believe in good faith that sharing information is reasonably necessary to prevent imminent physical harm to someone, including suspected child abuse, a risk of self-harm, or a threat to school safety, we reserve the right to access, preserve, and share that information with law enforcement or child-protective authorities.

To protect the site and its members. We may use and disclose information as needed to investigate abuse of the site or enforce our Terms of Use.

If the site ever changes hands. If operation of the site is transferred to a successor, they would be required to honor this policy for information collected under it.

Keeping your data safe

The site is served over HTTPS, so everything you send is encrypted in transit. Database access is controlled by row-level security rules, which means each account can only reach its own private data.

How long we keep things

We keep your information for as long as you have an account, because that is what makes the site work for you. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete the personal information tied to it (your profile, saved tool data, and private messages) promptly after we verify the request. Public forum posts may be deleted or anonymized (shown without your name) so that other teachers' conversations still make sense. Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe. Contact and consulting messages are kept only as long as we need them to respond and follow up. We may retain minimal records where the law requires it, and residual copies may persist in encrypted backups until those backups cycle out.

Your choices

• You can see and edit your profile anytime from your profile page.
• You can unsubscribe from any issue of the newsletter.
• You can ask us to delete your account and its data by writing to us through the contact page.
• You can turn off analytics for your browser with the switch in the "Cookies and local storage" section above.

Your privacy rights in the EU, UK, and US states

The Faculty Lounge is operated from the United States, and your information is stored on servers in the United States. If you use the site from the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another region with its own data-protection laws, you are sending your information to the United States, where the rules may differ from those at home.

For visitors covered by the EU or UK GDPR: The Faculty Lounge is the data controller for the information described in this policy. We process your information (a) to provide the site you signed up for, (b) for our legitimate interests in keeping the site safe, secure, and improving, and (c) with your consent for things like the newsletter, which you can withdraw at any time. You have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to withdraw consent. You can exercise any of these rights through the contact page, and you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

If you live in California or another US state with a consumer-privacy law, you have similar rights of access, correction, and deletion. We honor those requests for every member, no matter where you live, and we do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.

Children

The Faculty Lounge is a site for educators, not for children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. Classroom details that teachers put into the tools stay on the teacher's device by default, are controlled by the teacher, and can be deleted by the teacher at any time.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and say what changed in plain language. We will not quietly weaken it.