Here is everything you need to get Flint ready for the 2026-2027 school year, whether you are setting up for the first time or catching up after the first bell. Work through it in order — each section builds on the one before it.
Start with the new term
Flint is built on terms. A term mirrors your school year and keeps everything organized: instead of removing graduated students every summer, you create a new term and build your roster inside it. When it is ready, you make it the active one.
Creating and activating a new term does not delete last year's activities, sessions or chats. School owners can still open the previous term. Other people can open a visible previous term only if they retain access to the school and belonged to that term.
- In the sidebar, select Admin, then Settings, then Terms.
- Select Add, fill in the Term name, optionally set the Start date and End date, then select Create. New terms are always created Invisible, so only school owners — normally admins, including teacher-labelled creators — can see what you do next.
- Flint switches you into the new term and opens SIS and LMS, ready for your roster. Bring in your people and classes, then set your Content moderators on the Moderation page — moderators are set per term, so check the new one has the right people on it.
- When the term is ready, go back to Terms, edit the term, set Visibility to Active and select Save. Review the people, roles and moderators, then complete Flint's activation confirmation. Activating the term changes which roster grants school access, so people left out can lose access. The previous term remains Visible, subject to the access requirements above.
Overview of term creation and adding people — must watch
Teachers can bring last year's activities forward — either duplicating them into the new term or moving them across with student work attached. How to move and duplicate activities across schools and terms
Overview of moving activities — pass this along to your teachers
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Flexible moderators
- Moderators no longer have to be admins. Any teacher or admin can be a Content moderator. A school owner chooses the categories and grade levels each moderator covers — so a counselor can watch student wellbeing without gaining admin access.
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Classes, with curriculum and chats
- Classes now have their own chats for teachers and for students. Class chats use the class context and can look up class activities, curriculum materials and permitted roster information when needed. Teachers with Can edit access to the class can review students' class chats.
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Names have changed
- Groups are now Classes. This affects how you navigate everywhere in Flint.
- Workspace is now School.
- Members are now People.
- Finish the onboarding walkthrough if Flint shows it to you — it appears for school admins while the school is being set up
- Add your school website — Sparky drafts your mission, curriculum and moderation guidelines from it
- Confirm your school's Timezone
- Review and edit the mission and background
- Set up your curriculum
- Review the moderation guidelines
- Connect your SIS or LMS
- Create your new term
- While viewing the new term, review Admin → Settings → Curricula and Structure and set up its curriculum frameworks, documents and segments. Curriculum is term-specific; the school-wide mission and grade-level prompts carry across terms
- Add teachers and students
- Through your SIS or LMS (recommended — it is the only import that also builds the classes and their rosters)
- Or by pasting email addresses or uploading a CSV, which is faster but brings no classes
- Add your Content moderators in Admin → Settings → Moderation
- Choose the school-wide Alert frequency on that page, and any different frequency each moderator needs
- Review Admin → Settings → AI policy and add your school's policy materials
- Decide whether to enable Automatically keep {term} in sync during your SIS/LMS import. Automatic sync runs only while that term is active
- Set the 2026-2027 term's Visibility to Active
- Email your faculty and staff (there is a draft below)
The walkthrough is the fastest way to personalize Flint for your school. Flint shows it to school admins while the school is being set up. Its six stages cover:
- Your school website
- Sparky reads your school's website and uses it to draft your mission, curriculum and moderation guidelines, so you start with something tailored to your school instead of a blank page. You review and edit all of it before anything is saved.
- Your school timezone
- Confirm the School timezone field. Flint uses it for access hours and scheduled moderation summaries; the setting applies even if access-hour limits are off.
- Your mission & background
- Sparky combines your website with the mission and background already saved for your school. Review and edit the draft before saving. This context applies across the whole school, so teachers do not have to repeat the same instructions in every activity.
- Set up your curriculum
- Choose from built-in frameworks such as AP, IB and Common Core, or upload your own curriculum documents. Teachers can then align their classes to those standards, and Sparky identifies the standards in each activity, evaluates student progress against them, and reports on cognitive rigor using Bloom's taxonomy.
- Moderation guidelines
- Sparky drafts guidelines from your school's values for how it should respond when a conversation touches something sensitive. Adjust them so Sparky handles those moments the way your school would.
- Connect your roster
- Connecting your SIS or LMS brings in teachers, students, grade levels and rosters as classes, exactly as they are listed in your system. It runs through Edlink at no extra charge, and it is by far the biggest saving in teacher setup time.
You can change any of this later in Admin → Settings. The onboarding video below predates the Timezone step.
One thing the walkthrough does not cover: grade-level prompts. Those live in Admin → Settings → Sparky customizations, under Grade-level prompts. They let you set how Sparky talks to each grade and what it should decline to produce — for example, no images or slide decks for fifth graders. How to customize grade-level prompts
Overview of onboarding
Hi team,
We hope you had a wonderful summer. As we get into the new year, Flint has made some real improvements to your day-to-day experience — and everything you built last year stays exactly where you left it.
What's new: classes
What used to be called Groups are now Classes, and they do much more: curriculum alignment, class chats that use your class context and can look up course materials when needed, course material uploads, richer analytics, and a clearer view of what your students are actually learning.
- You'll see insights we couldn't surface before: Bloom's alignment, mastery by standard, and where students are thriving or need support.
- Setup is faster, and Sparky tailors things to our school so your activities feel right out of the box.
- Watch the video overview
Last year's work is safe — and easy to bring forward
- Everything you built last year is still in the previous term. Nothing has been deleted.
- When you're ready, use the import tool to move your activities and materials into the new term in a few clicks. Here's a quick walkthrough.
Looking forward to a great year.
{Your name}
- Flint 101 — an hour-long asynchronous training, with activities teachers can try as they go
- Admin → Professional development → AI literacy course — in-app learning where enabled. The course is not available on the UK deployment; see AI literacy course and certification
- Get started with Flint for teachers — one guide with pictures, videos and context on how to use Flint
- Admin essentials checklist — the settings worth getting right before students arrive
- Rolling out Flint at your school — training options and a rollout plan
- Flint How-Tos on YouTube — short walkthroughs of chats, activities, analytics and student safety
Need a hand? Select Learn more about Flint in the sidebar, then Help, to reach our team.