Terms, Periods, and Classes

If you run a co-op, micro-school, or any program with a class schedule, three building blocks work together to organize it: terms, periods, and classes. This article explains what each one is and, most importantly, how a class can either follow a shared period or set its own custom schedule.

The Big Picture

Think of it as three layers, from the outside in:

A Term is a session of your year — like a semester or quarter — with a start and end date.
A Period is a named, recurring time slot inside a term, such as "1st Hour" on Tuesdays from 9:00–10:00.
A Class is a course families enroll in. It lives inside a term and meets either on a period or on its own custom schedule.

A term contains many periods, and a term contains many classes. Each class points back to one term, and optionally to one period within that term.

Terms

A term is the container for everything else. You manage terms under Academics → Terms. A term has:

A name — for example, "Fall 2026."
Start and end dates — the window the term runs. These dates matter because they decide how many times each class actually meets (more on that below).
A status — Upcoming, Active, or Archived.
Enrollment settings — whether enrollment is open, an optional close date, and an optional family fee.

Periods

Periods are the recurring time slots inside a term. You add them to a term from the same Academics → Terms page. Each period has:

A label — like "1st Hour" or "Morning Block."
A day of the week — for example, Tuesday.
A start and end time — for example, 9:00–10:00.

Periods exist so a co-op can share one consistent schedule. If your Tuesday morning has a "1st Hour," "2nd Hour," and" 3rd Hour," you create those three periods once on the term, and then every class can be slotted into one of them.

Tip

Periods are optional. If your classes don't line up to shared time blocks — or you only have a handful of classes — you can skip periods entirely and give each class its own custom schedule instead.

Classes: Period vs. Custom Schedule

This is the part that trips people up. When you create a class under Academics → Classes and pick its term, the Schedule section gives you a choice between two modes:

Period

The class uses one of the term's periods. You pick the period from a dropdown (it shows the day and time), and the class inherits that period's day and time. This is the normal case for a co-op: lots of classes all meeting in the same shared "1st Hour" block.

Custom schedule

The class sets its own weekly meeting time — you choose a day, a start time, and an end time just for that class, independent of any period. Use this when a class meets at a time that isn't one of the term's periods, or when the term has no periods at all.

Note

A class uses one mode or the other, never both. If the term you pick has no periods defined, the choice disappears and the class automatically uses a custom schedule — that's the only option available.

"Custom schedule" means a custom weekly time (a day plus a start and end time), not a single one-off calendar date. You can add more than one weekly slot to a custom class later — open the class and use its schedule section to add or remove times.

How Meeting Dates Get Generated

Whichever mode a class uses, the result is the same: the platform takes the weekly pattern (the period's day/time, or the custom day/time) and combines it with the term's start and end dates to generate the individual meeting dates — called sessions.

For example, a class on a Tuesday 9:00 period in a term that runs September through December produces one session for every Tuesday in that range. Those sessions are what you take attendance against on the class page.

Note

Because sessions come from the term's dates, the term's start and end dates control how many times a class meets. If the meeting dates look wrong, check the term dates first.

Why Use a Period Instead of Always Going Custom?

Beyond keeping schedules tidy, periods power schedule conflict detection. A student can't be enrolled in two classes that share the same period — the system blocks the double-booking and tells the family which class is in the way.

Custom-schedule classes do not participate in this check, even if two of them happen to overlap in time. So if avoiding double-booked students matters to you, put your classes on periods.

Tip

A simple rule of thumb: if several classes meet at the same shared time slots, define periods on the term and assign classes to them. If a class is a one-off that meets at its own time, give it a custom schedule.

Putting It Together

A typical setup, start to finish:

Create the term

Under Academics → Terms, add a term with its name and start/end dates — for example, "Fall 2026, Sep 1 – Dec 15."

Add periods (if you use them)

On that term, add the shared time blocks, like "1st Hour — Tue 9:00–10:00" and "2nd Hour — Tue 10:00–11:00."

Create classes

Under Academics → Classes, create each class, pick its term, and choose either a period or a custom schedule.

Open enrollment

Back on the term, turn on enrollment so families can sign up. Sessions are generated from the schedule and term dates, ready for attendance.