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I’m a Teacher Who Dreamed of Building Software Teachers Actually Want

For years, I watched countless students slip under the radar, too shy or overwhelmed to put their hand up, and I knew there had to be a better way.

When I first sketched out GoCoTeacher, the idea was wonderfully simple: give teachers a quick, live sense of how well students were following a lesson. This wasn’t just a technical challenge; it was deeply personal. As a teacher, especially working with autistic students, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it is to truly gauge understanding. Students who don’t speak up are often assumed to be getting it, but silence doesn’t always mean comprehension.

My goal was clear: build a tool that creates a clear window into the classroom so every student, especially the quietest, feels seen and heard. That’s why GoCoTeacher lets teachers instantly start live sessions, invite students with a simple code, and track engagement as it happens.

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The Spark: From Sketch to Prototype

I quickly built a prototype using React, Vite, and Supabase, a basic teaching_feedback table with simple visual cues. The first real test came during my uni placement, when my classmates tried it with their students. The response was electric. Kids loved sending messages anonymously, letting them participate without fear, and the Wordle-inspired warm-up was a hit, breaking the ice and drawing out even the most reserved students.

Teachers then asked the crucial questions: “Who exactly is confused?” and “Can they leave a question tied to a specific part of the lesson?” These questions pushed me beyond the original idea, leading to per-slide checks, where teachers can see understanding on each specific lesson card, and anonymous Q&A, letting students send questions linked to exact points in the lesson.

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The Journey: Overcoming Challenges and Growing Resilience

Each step forward brought new challenges that forced me to rethink and adapt. One of the toughest was building real-time features while protecting student data, which took me deep into Supabase’s Row Level Security. As a teacher without a technical background, it was incredibly frustrating at times, but tools like Bolt helped me work through it.

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Redefining the User Experience

My first sidebar design quickly became cluttered and distracting for teachers during live sessions. This led to a rethink with a tabbed layout that made it easier to switch between slides, view student responses, and assign extension tasks without disrupting teaching. The biggest improvement came from creating a separate page for managing lesson cards, which made planning and reordering much clearer and simpler.

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The Power of Specific Feedback

Connecting student responses to individual slides changed everything. This level of feedback let teachers identify exactly where students struggled and adjust pacing in real time. It also enabled progress tracking, where teachers can see a timeline of student understanding as they move through each lesson card.

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Hidden Hurdles

Behind each working feature were tricky problems, like the waiting room issue with null versus -1 that broke joining logic. Real-time replication problems required building custom channels to ensure every student response arrived on time during lessons.

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Exploring AI to Support Teachers

Bringing AI into GoCoTeacher wasn’t about chasing trends. It was about making life easier for teachers. AI helps suggest supportive materials when students struggle with particular slides, and creates extension tasks for students who need more challenge or help, all in one place.

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Learning Through Debugging

I spent countless hours in the console, turning each error into an opportunity to improve. Those moments taught me patience and precision, and built a stronger, more reliable tool for teachers.

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Today & The Vision: Technology That Fits Teaching

Today, GoCoTeacher runs on Netlify, Supabase, and a single Postgres database. Teachers can start live sessions with unique join codes, let students ask anonymous questions, run per-slide checks, assign AI-powered extension tasks, monitor progress live, and use Wordle-inspired warm-ups to kickstart engagement. They can also see real-time changes in student understanding, giving a clear view of how their class is following each part of a lesson.

Every part of GoCoTeacher has been designed to work with teachers, not against them. It adapts to real classrooms and supports the way teachers already teach.

Built With

• bolt.new
• claude
• coderabbit
• react
• realtime
• supabase
• tailwind
• vite