Terms of Use

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

What changed on August 3: we added rules about bots and AI-generated content, a rule about naming private individuals, plain language about meeting other members off the site, and clearer terms for how accounts can be closed.

Agreeing to these terms

By using The Faculty Lounge (myfacultylounge.com) you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site. The site is intended for adults, which for these terms means people 18 or older. If you are under 18, do not create an account or use the site; we close accounts belonging to anyone under 18 when we learn of them.

Your account

• Give accurate information when you sign up, and keep your sign-in details to yourself.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. If you think someone else has gotten into it, change your password and let us know.
• Be who you say you are. Impersonating another person or claiming teaching experience you do not have is grounds for removal.

Community rules

The forums, messages, and mentorship exist so teachers can help teachers. Keeping that true requires a few hard lines. Do not:

• Harass, demean, or attack other members. Disagreeing about teaching is welcome; being cruel is not.
• Post spam, advertising, or self-promotion dressed up as advice.
• Share another person's private information, including identifiable information about students (see "Protecting student privacy" below).
• Name or otherwise identify a private individual when posting about a conflict, including principals, administrators, and colleagues. "My principal" or "a veteran teacher on my hall" gives the community everything it needs to help, and it protects you as much as it protects them.
• Post anything illegal, hateful, or sexually explicit.
• Use bots, scrapers, or other automated tools to post content, collect content, harvest member information, or interfere with how the site runs. This includes scraping the site to train or feed AI systems.
• Pass off AI-generated material as your own classroom-tested work. Using AI to help build something is fine; if a resource or post is substantially AI-generated, say so.

We will remove content or accounts that break these rules.

Protecting student privacy

Much of what happens here is teachers talking through real classroom situations. Do that the way you would in a public staff room with the door open. When you post in the forums, message another member, talk with a mentor, or fill out a profile:

• Do not share a student's name, photo, or anything else that could identify a specific student.
• Do not share confidential student information, such as grades, discipline records, health or disability information, or family circumstances tied to an identifiable student.
• Do not share the contents of a student's education plan, including IEPs, 504 plans, or any other special-education or accommodation documents.

Describe situations generally instead: "a seventh grader who shuts down during group work" gives a mentor everything they need. This rule protects students, and it protects you. Student records are governed by laws like FERPA and by your district's own policies, and posting them on an outside site can put your job at risk. We will remove content that identifies a student.

What you post

When you post something on this site, you give The Faculty Lounge permission to store and display it so the site can work (for example, showing your forum reply to other members). Only share what you have the right to share. Do not post copyrighted materials that are not yours to give away.

If you upload a resource, you are confirming that it is your own original work, or that you have the right to share it, and that it is not something your employer or school district owns. Materials created as part of your job can legally belong to your district as work made for hire, so when in doubt, check your contract or ask before sharing. If someone brings a claim against The Faculty Lounge over something you uploaded, the indemnification section below applies.

Our resources and tools

The guides, templates, rubrics, email templates, and tools are free for your teaching. You may use them in your classroom, adapt them, print them, and share them with colleagues. You may not resell them, repackage them as your own product, or strip the credit from them. That is the entire license, and we think it is a fair one.

Mentorship

Mentors on The Faculty Lounge are volunteer educators sharing hard-won experience. They are generous people, not a licensed advice service, and their suggestions are not professional, legal, or medical advice. Your school's policies and your own professional judgment always come first.

We review mentor applications, but we cannot guarantee any person's conduct. Keep conversations professional, share personal contact information only when you are comfortable, and report anything that feels wrong. We take reports seriously.

Meeting off the site. The Faculty Lounge is an online connection platform. We do not run criminal background checks, we do not verify credentials beyond the mentor application, and we do not supervise conversations or meetings that happen off the site, whether by video, phone, email, or in person. If you choose to take a connection off the site, you do so entirely at your own risk, and you release the Released Parties (defined in the "Limitation of liability and release" section below) from all claims arising out of or related to off-platform interactions. The practical version: treat a first in-person meeting the way you would treat meeting any internet acquaintance. Public place, daytime, your own transportation.

Consulting

Workshops and consulting for schools and districts are arranged separately through the consulting page, with their own scope and pricing agreed in writing. These terms cover the free site.

Ending an account

You can stop using the site, or ask us to delete your account, at any time through the contact page. Accounts are free, and they are provided at our discretion: we can suspend or close any account at any time, with or without notice. In practice we only do that when an account breaks these terms or puts members at risk, but the call is ours to make, and closing an account does not require a warning first.

Keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. The tools have print and export options for exactly this reason. We cannot promise that content from a closed or deleted account will be recoverable.

Our role as a platform

The Faculty Lounge is a platform whose purpose is to help teachers by connecting educators with one another in good faith. We facilitate those connections; we do not supervise, direct, or control the advice, opinions, or other content that mentors, members, or other users exchange through the site, and we do not endorse, verify, or assume responsibility for the specific advice or information that any mentor or member shares. Any decision you make in reliance on advice or content obtained through the site is your own, and any reliance you place on such advice or content is at your sole risk.

Federal law draws the same line. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230), The Faculty Lounge is not treated as the publisher or speaker of content that members and other users provide.

Disclaimer of warranties

The site, and all content, resources, tools, and services made available through it, are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including without limitation implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do our best to keep the site accurate, available, and safe, but we do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components, or that any content or advice obtained through it will be accurate, complete, or suitable for your circumstances.

Limitation of liability and release

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you agree that you will not hold The Faculty Lounge, or its owners, operators, administrators, employees, volunteers, mentors, moderators, contributors, or anyone else associated with The Faculty Lounge (together, the "Released Parties"), liable for anything that happens on, through, or as a result of this site. This includes, without limitation, any claim arising out of or relating to: (a) your use of, or inability to use, the site; (b) the advice, statements, conduct, or content of any mentor, member, or other user; (c) any interaction, relationship, or dispute between you and another member, whether on or off the site; and (d) any decision made or action taken in reliance on content or advice obtained through the site.

To the same extent, the Released Parties shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, opportunity, reputation, employment, or profits, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Because the site is provided free of charge, the total aggregate liability of the Released Parties for all claims arising out of or relating to the site shall not exceed the amount you paid The Faculty Lounge to use the site, which is zero dollars ($0). You hereby release the Released Parties from all claims, demands, and damages of every kind, known or unknown, disclosed or undisclosed, arising out of or in any way connected with the matters described in this section. If you are a California resident, you expressly waive the protections of California Civil Code Section 1542, which provides: "A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party." Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty disclaimers or limitations of liability, so portions of the two sections above may not apply to you; in that case, the liability of the Released Parties is limited to the greatest extent permitted by applicable law.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Released Parties from and against any claims, demands, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) your use of the site; (b) content you post or share on or through the site; (c) your violation of these terms, including the student-privacy rules above; or (d) your violation of any law or of the rights of any third party, including intellectual-property, privacy, and confidentiality rights.

Copyright complaints (DMCA)

We respect the intellectual property of others and expect members to do the same. If you believe that material on the site infringes your copyright, send us a notice through the contact page that includes: (1) identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed; (2) the URL or other location of the material you want removed; (3) your name, mailing address, and email address; (4) a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; (5) a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf; and (6) your physical or electronic signature.

When we receive a valid notice, we will remove or disable access to the material and make a reasonable attempt to notify the member who posted it. That member may send us a counter-notice meeting the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(g), in which case we may restore the material unless the complaining party tells us it has filed a court action. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

Governing law and venue

These terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms or your use of the site, are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland and applicable United States federal law, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. You agree that any such dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Maryland, and you consent to personal jurisdiction and venue in those courts. If you access the site from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with the laws of your own jurisdiction.

Severability and other legal fine print

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and The Faculty Lounge about the site, and they replace any earlier understandings. If any provision of these terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect. Our decision not to enforce a provision on one occasion is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later. You may not assign or transfer these terms; we may assign them in connection with a transfer of the site's operation, and the terms will bind and benefit any permitted successors.

Changes to these terms

If we make a meaningful change, we will update the date at the top and describe the change in plain language. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Questions

If any of this is unclear, ask us through the contact page. We wrote these terms to be read, and we are happy to explain anything in them.