Why I'm Building an App While Teaching Full-Time (Because My Memory is Shot)

Let's be real for a second: To be a good teacher you need a good memory. You need to be good at staying organized. I stink at both!

I love my kids. I love teaching. I love the excitement of the classroom. I love the way the 8 and 9 year olds are excited about the littlest things. But by 3:15 PM, my brain feels like my Chrome browser with 27 tabs open, and 3 of them are playing music. And I can't figure out which ones. It's exhausting. It makes me second guess my choices in life. Did I really want to be a teacher?

I realized I had a huge problem. I have the worst memory ever. A kid would act up at 9:35 and I would tell myself, "I'm definitely calling home about that later," and then... then the day unfolded. Half of the keyboard would stop working on a Chromebook. A student would be in the bathroom for 12 minutes. Another student would tell me they were getting picked up early because their mom had a hair appointment. My lesson would go sideways because the projector bulb finally blew after it had been making a weird noise for the last 2 months. My day was getting longer, my patience level was getting shorter. And it was only 10:20.

By the time I sat down at 3:35 to pull my life together, the specific "what" and "why" of that behavior was just gone. Sometimes I couldn't even remember who it was.

The "No Consequence" Loop

Here's the ugly truth: when you forget to follow up, the kids notice. If there's no phone call home and no conversation the next morning, the behavior doesn't change. In fact, it gets worse. I was stuck in a loop where:

• Kid acts out.
• I forget the details.
• No consequence happens.
• Kid does it again (louder).

I was so frustrated with myself. I knew I could do better. I knew the well-behaved kids in the class needed me to do better. My classroom management was suffering because I couldn't keep my "data" straight.

Why I Didn't Just Use a Notebook

I tried the sticky notes. The students would ask me why I had sticky notes all over my desk. I rarely wrote what I actually needed to write so later they were little help. I tried the "teacher planner." But those things don't live in my pocket. I needed something better. I needed something that worked at the speed of a 9-year-old's meltdown.

So, I started building ShortHand.

I'm a 2nd-year teacher. I'm a dad. I don't have "extra" time. But I realized that spending an hour "vibe coding" at night to build a button that handles my parent communication for me saves me ten hours of stress during the week. And I feel like I have my classroom back.

By a Teacher Who Gets It

I'm building this app because I needed a brain backup. I needed a way to tap a button, log a behavior, and have the AI help me turn that into a professional parent note before I even leave the classroom. It started that simple. But it turned into so much more.

ShortHand isn't built by a tech company in Silicon Valley. It's built in a 1-bedroom apartment in Jersey by a guy who just wants his 3rd graders to listen the first time.

If you're a teacher who feels like you're constantly dropping the ball on documentation, I'm building this for us.

Try ShortHand for free