Before you sign up, please be aware of the following policies, including who can participate at ProTeacher, and our strict view on commercial messages, public service, blog and website announcements:

Who Can Participate

All of our boards are intended exclusively for professional teachers and staff (including classroom teachers, specialists, substitute teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, and student teachers) working in early childhood, elementary grades K-6 and middle school. We also welcome retired and former PreK-8 teachers with a continuing professional interest in teaching. We are NOT a homeschooling site.

Reporters, authors, students, parents, and all other non-teachers seeking teacher opinions should contact ProTeacher for permission prior to posting. Student teachers in classroom teaching experiences are welcome to post. Education majors are welcome to post on certain boards, but should wait until their student teaching begins before posting on other boards (although they are always welcome to listen in!) See our Participation Guidelines for a special note to Future Teachers.

Advertisers, Individuals and Organizations

Advertisers, individuals, and organizations with news relevant to elementary school teaching are invited to post ONE announcement on our Advertisements Board, a link to which can be found on our Home page. Advertisers are further invited to read our Advertising Information page for other promotional opportunities.

All other commercial messages and public service announcements are not allowed and shall be removed promptly. In addition, your web address, company or product name may be blocked permanently from view. Contacting our visitors for commercial purposes except as mentioned above is not allowed nor tolerated. In particular, unauthorized collection and/or use of email addresses is strictly not allowed.

You are considered an advertiser if you are promoting something such as a product, a service, a blog, a website, an organization, an event -even yourself- regardless of whether your intent is commercial or noncommercial. Do the right and proper thing. Click here to post on the Advertisements board.

Speakers and Authors of Books, Blogs & Websites

See 'Advertisers' section above.

Participate, but do not promote. If you are a teacher, you may share ideas with us, but you must NOT mention your service, product, book, blog or website. Treat us as friends and colleagues, not as an opportunity!

Please do not announce your blog or website on ProTeacher regardless of whether or not your site is commercial. To preserve the friendly community atmosphere, ALL blog and web site announcements are strictly not allowed* (contact ProTeacher via the suggestions link on the home page to suggest your site for inclusion in the Directory portion of the site). (*One exception only: Teachers are welcome to share their class websites or blogs for the purpose of sharing ideas and getting feedback. A class website or blog is created expressly for communicating with one's own students and their parents.) Similarly, avatars and other images or attachments you post may not be used as vehicles for advertising or promoting.

See our Participation Guidelines page for more guidelines for participating at ProTeacher. Visitor understands that our Participation Guidelines may be revised and updated from time to time without notice. Visitor agrees to abide by ProTeacher Community guidelines and rules.