Terms of Service

These terms are the agreement between you and Teach Different, Inc. when you use our website, listen to our podcast, subscribe to our email, join our community, or take part in one of our programs. Using any of it means you accept them. If you do not, please do not use the services.

Section 1Who we are and who may use this

Teach Different, Inc. is an Illinois company. "We" and "us" mean Teach Different, Inc. "You" means the person reading this, and if you are agreeing on behalf of a school or district, it means that organization too, and you are confirming you have the authority to bind it.

You must be 18 or older to hold an account with us. Our services are built for teachers, administrators and other adults who work in education. They are not for children. Anyone under 18 should not create an account, register for a program, or post in the community.

Section 2What we offer

• The website and the podcast, free to anyone, including the episode archive and the transcripts.
• Email, free, and you can leave whenever you like.
• The online community, a paid membership giving access to the conversation plan library, printable handouts, teacher guides and discussion.
• Training, including workshops delivered live and in schools.
• The certificate program, a structured course with an award at the end.

We may change, add to, or discontinue any of this. If we discontinue something you have paid for and cannot deliver it, section 5 says what happens.

Section 3Your account

Keep your password to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has it. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

An account is for one person. A membership bought by one teacher covers that teacher. If a school wants its staff covered, that is a school agreement, and we are glad to arrange one. Sharing a login across a department is the one thing that genuinely costs us, so we ask you not to.

Our community and courses run on Mighty Networks. Using them means you are also subject to Mighty Networks' own terms.

Section 4Paying for things

Prices, billing periods and what is included are whatever is stated at the point you buy. Memberships renew automatically for the same period until you cancel. Fees are in United States dollars and do not include any tax your jurisdiction adds.

If a payment fails we will try again and tell you. If it keeps failing we may suspend access until it is settled.

We may change prices. An existing subscription keeps its price until the end of its current period, and we will tell you before a new price applies to a renewal.

Section 5Cancelling and refunds

You can cancel a membership at any time from your account settings. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not refund the period you are in, and you keep access until that period ends.

Any refund terms specific to a program, including workshops and the certificate program, are the terms stated when you register for it. Where nothing is stated, write to us and we will deal with you fairly.

If we cancel a program you have paid for and cannot offer you a replacement date you can make, we refund you in full.

Section 6What you may do with our materials

Everything we publish, including the conversation plans, the handouts, the teacher guides, the episodes and their transcripts, belongs to Teach Different or to the people we licensed it from. Subject to the paragraph above, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use it for your own teaching and professional learning.

What that licence does not cover:

• Distributing our materials to educators outside your own classroom, or posting them where the public or another school can download them.
• Using them to deliver paid professional development, training or coaching, whether or not you charge for it yourself.
• Selling them, or including them in something you sell.
• Re-publishing episodes or transcripts in full, or using them to train a machine learning model.
• Stripping our name off them and presenting the method as your own.

You are welcome to quote us, and to link to us, with attribution. If you want to do something this section does not allow, ask. The answer is often yes, and it costs you one email.

Section 7What you post

What you write in the community, or send us, stays yours. You are giving us permission to display it in the community, and to store and back it up so the service works.

Separately: if you tell us a story about how a conversation went in your classroom, we may want to quote you, in a newsletter, on the website, or in a workshop. We will ask you first, every time. We will not use your name or your school without your say-so.

Please do not post anything you do not have the right to post, and please do not post identifiable information about a student. See our Privacy Policy on that.

Section 8How to behave

Our community exists so educators can disagree well. That only works if people are decent to each other. Do not harass anyone, do not post hateful or threatening content, do not spam or recruit, do not scrape or copy the library wholesale, do not try to break into anything, and do not use our services to break the law.

We may remove content or close an account that does these things. For anything short of a serious breach we will talk to you first.

Section 9Our name and marks

"Teach Different" and our logo are our marks. Completing our certificate program lets you say you completed it, and use whatever badge we issue you, for as long as your certification stands. It does not make you a Teach Different trainer, and it does not let you present yourself as delivering Teach Different training. If that is what you want to do, come and talk to us; we have a route for it.

Section 10Other people's services

We link to other sites and we run parts of our service on platforms we do not own, including Mighty Networks, Livestorm, Spotify and YouTube. We are not responsible for what those companies do or for the content on sites we link to. Your use of them is between you and them.

Section 11What we do not promise

Our services are provided as they are. We do not warrant that they will be uninterrupted or error free, and to the fullest extent the law allows we disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

We also want to be plain about something more important than the legal boilerplate: we do not guarantee educational outcomes. Our method is well grounded and we believe in it, but what happens in your classroom depends on you, your students and your circumstances. Nothing we publish is legal, medical or psychological advice.

Section 12Limits on liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Teach Different will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost data or lost opportunity, arising out of your use of the services, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for any claim relating to the services is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one hundred United States dollars if you paid us nothing.

Some states do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

Section 13Covering our costs

If someone brings a claim against us because of something you did with our services, in particular because of content you posted or because you used our materials outside the licence in section 6, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and damages from it.

Section 14Ending this

You can stop using the services at any time and close your account. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, and we will tell you why. If we close your account for something other than a breach, we refund the unused part of anything you have paid.

Sections 6 through 13 survive the end of this agreement.

Section 15Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute goes to the state or federal courts located in Illinois, and we both agree to that.

Before anyone files anything, please write to support@teachdifferent.com and give us thirty days to sort it out. Most things can be sorted out.

Section 16Changes, and the small print

We may update these terms. The effective date at the top changes when we do. If a change is material we will tell subscribers and members by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the services after that means you accept the new version.

If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later. You may not transfer this agreement to someone else; we may transfer it if the business is sold. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the services.

How to reach us

Teach Different, Inc.
Email: support@teachdifferent.com
Phone: 309-303-0220