Education & Sunday School Module Overview

The Education module in TimelyChurch provides a complete system for managing your church's Sunday School program, Bible study classes, and educational ministries. It connects lesson planning, class management, teacher scheduling, student enrollment, and attendance tracking into one unified experience.

Key Components

The Education module is built around four interconnected areas:

Drive (the Lesson Library)

A centralized home for all teaching content. Lessons include scripture references, learning objectives, supplies lists, and materials. Drive holds lessons and files side by side in folders you create, and lessons can also be labeled by audience (Kids, Youth, Adults, All Ages), category (Bible Study, Worship, Discipleship, and more), and series. Folders and files can be shared with teams, with specific people, or by link.

Class Management

Classes are where teaching happens. Each class has an assigned room, age range, teachers, and an enrolled student roster. The class detail page provides a unified "My Class" experience with tabs for Today (attendance), Roster (enrollment), and History (past attendance).

Teacher Scheduling

Class sessions on events connect teachers, classes, and lessons for specific dates. The system supports teacher confirmation workflows, substitute request handling, lesson approval, prep tasks, and coverage reports.

Teacher/Member Portal

Teachers see their own schedule, pick or create lessons, request substitutes, and manage their availability -- all from the member portal.

How It All Connects

1. Admins create classes with rooms, age ranges, and assigned teachers.
2. Admins build a lesson library in Drive with curriculum content and materials.
3. Class sessions are added to events on the event's Classes & Lessons tab -- linking a class to an event date and assigning a teacher and (optionally) a lesson. The Schedule Grid helps fill teaching assignments across several weeks at once.
4. Teachers sign in to the portal to view their upcoming schedule, pick lessons, and prepare for class.
5. On Sunday morning, teachers (or admins) take attendance using the Today tab, marking each student as present, absent, late, or excused.
6. Attendance history is tracked automatically and can be reviewed over time.

Navigating the Module

From the admin sidebar navigation:

• Drive (under Planning) -- Opens your lesson library, where you create, browse, and manage lessons, files, and folders.
• Classes (under Planning) -- Opens the Classes page, where you manage classes, rosters, teachers, and attendance.
• Lesson Settings -- The gear icon at the top of Drive, where you configure categories, audiences, and general lesson preferences.

Note: Classes are a kind of group behind the scenes, but the Classes page is their home. If you open a class from the Groups list or an older link, TimelyChurch takes you to its class page.

Permissions

The Education module uses role-based permissions:

• Church Admins have full access to create, edit, approve, and delete lessons and classes.
• Teachers can pick approved lessons for their sessions, create new lessons (if allowed in settings), request substitutes, and take attendance for their assigned classes.
• Members can view lesson summaries shared through the member portal (parent-facing content like memory verses and home activities).

Module Settings

Lesson settings are accessible from the gear icon at the top of Drive. Three tabs of configuration are available:

• Categories -- Organize lessons by topic (Bible Study, Worship, Discipleship, Evangelism, Prayer, Fellowship, Missions, Other). You can add custom categories, rename them, assign colors, and reorder them.
• Audiences -- Define target age groups (Kids 0-11, Youth 12-18, Adults 18+, All Ages). Custom audiences can be added with names, emojis, colors, and age ranges.
• General Settings -- Control workflow options like requiring lesson approval, allowing teachers to create lessons, requiring scripture references or objectives, display options, class materials sharing, Drive share link expiry, and the attachment size limit.

Related Features

• Check-In -- Students checked in through the Check-In module appear on the class's Today tab.
• Events -- Class scheduling is integrated with the Events module for calendar-based planning.
• Notifications -- Teachers receive notifications when assigned to teach, when lessons need selection, and when substitute requests are created.
• Public Sharing -- Take-home class materials can appear on public event pages, with optional PIN protection, and Drive files can be shared by link. See Public Lesson Sharing.