Teacher Reminder started with Ms. Valeria, a fifth-grade teacher, and one simple idea: make it easier to move between all the little things a school day brings.
She described the problem exactly. She would be part way through something — a form, an email, a note to a parent — when a student needed her. She dealt with the student, because that is the job. And afterwards the thing she had been doing was simply gone from her mind.
She already had a to-do list when that was happening. So a list on its own clearly wasn’t the answer.
Two seconds is the whole design.
A thought lasts about as long as it takes a student to reach your desk. If writing it down takes longer than that, it doesn’t get written down — and every decision in Teacher Reminder comes back to protecting those two seconds.
That’s why there are no folders, no projects, no due dates and no fields to fill in. One list, and a button at the top of it. Everything clever the app does — when a reminder comes back, what rises to the top, what changes color — happens afterwards, on its own, without asking you anything.
It should have you looking at your phone less, not more.
What it refuses to do.
It never asks what you are doing
No start button, no timer, no checking in. An early version did ask you to tell it when you were working on something, and it was cut — anything that needs a teacher to keep it informed is one more thing to remember, which is the opposite of the point.
There is no streak to break
Nothing here rewards you for opening it, and nothing scolds you for a quiet week. A tool that punishes you for a hard Tuesday gets deleted on Wednesday.
Nothing is ever cleared for you
If you didn’t tick it, it’s still there — tomorrow, next week, next month. It never expires, never archives itself, never quietly disappears.
Color is the only thing that raises its voice
Something written today looks plain. By tomorrow it has warmed to cream, and after three days it is red. Nothing buzzes. It just gets harder to walk past.
One promise we take seriously.
Before this existed, Ms. Valeria had tried an app that promised to remind her and never did. That’s the thing that loses a teacher, and it’s why nothing on this site describes something the app cannot do.
Notifications are being built to the same rule. They will be off until you turn them on, they will arrive at the moments you chose — your prep period, lunch, after school — and never while you are teaching, because a banner mid-lesson is the exact problem this was built to solve.
They are not finished yet, so this page says “will” rather than “does”. That is the point.
Where it is now
Young, and shaped by one classroom.
Teacher Reminder is made for the phone in your pocket. There is no account and no email, and what you write stays on your own phone. You can try the demo on this site to see how it works; the app itself is on its way.
It’s still young, and it’s still shaped by Ms. Valeria’s classroom. If you teach and something about it is wrong for the way your day actually runs, that’s the most useful thing anyone can tell us.
No account or email required.