Help & FAQ

From your parent dashboard, click + Add Child. Enter their first name, a login email (tip: you can use yourname+childname@gmail.com — it goes straight to your inbox), their grade, state, and curriculum. Then share those login details with your child — they sign in at /students/login/.

Find your child's card on the parent dashboard and click Edit Profile. You can update their grade, state, and curriculum at any time. The AI will immediately adapt all future lessons and chat responses to the new settings.

A Study Plan lays your child's actual course out week by week. It is built from the real lessons and unit tests in the course they are enrolled in — in the order they are taught — not written from scratch, so the plan and their lessons always agree. On your child's card, click Generate Study Plan, pick a subject, a start date, and how many weeks (4–40), and click Generate. It's ready in seconds. Each week's ticks fill in as your child works. You can print it or save it as a PDF, and you choose whether your child sees it under My Learning.

Each child has their own subscription — $39/mo per child (or $349.99/yr), renewing automatically. Signing up is free; you activate each child when you're ready, and you can cancel any child individually from your dashboard. A cancelled child keeps access through the end of the period you've already paid for, and all their progress, scores, and history are saved. Nothing is lost.

Click Manage billing on your parent dashboard (visible when your subscription is active). This opens the Stripe billing portal where you can cancel, change your plan, update your payment method, or download invoices.

Yes. Scroll to the bottom of your parent dashboard and toggle off Weekly Progress Report or Struggle Alerts. Changes save instantly. You can turn them back on at any time.

Lessons — structured, step-by-step lessons (overview, vocabulary, video, a hands-on Learn section, a Socratic Coach, and a check quiz) in Math, Science, English, and Social Studies.

Challenge — adaptive practice using real grade-level questions, with Quick, Deep, and 60-second Blitz modes.

Ask Ally — a friendly AI tutor that knows the page they're on and answers questions about it.

Inside their own account, your child gets a kid-friendly tour of all of it under How It Works.

XP is earned for lessons, activities, and correct answers, and raises your child's level.

Coins are also earned by learning and are spent in the Store on dashboard themes, Ally accessories, and power-ups (like a Streak Freeze). Coins buy cosmetics and small conveniences only — never lesson content, and never anything that costs real money.

Streaks count days in a row; a Streak Freeze protects one against a missed day. There are also daily & weekly XP goals, a daily reward, badges, and a sticker collection for finishing units. It's motivation scaffolding — none of it changes what your child is taught or how their work is scored.

This is intentional — it's called the Socratic method, and it's how the best tutors actually teach. Research shows students who reach an answer through guided questions retain the concept far longer than students who were told it. So if your child reports that "it wouldn't just tell me," that is the product working as designed.

Each lesson ends with a Check quiz, and there are larger Unit and Course tests. 70% or higher passes. Completed lessons show a green ✓ on the learning map; anything below 70% is flagged review. Your child can retake as often as they like — the first attempt is what their progress report records, with retakes listed alongside it and labelled as retakes, so you see both the honest first score and the improvement. The AI tutor is disabled during every scored test, on the server as well as in the page, so a score reflects your child and not the tutor.

Alongside is designed for middle school — Grades 6, 7, and 8. Topics and lesson difficulty are automatically adjusted to the student's grade level.

Yes — Alongside is mobile-first. Every page is designed to work on any phone or tablet. Lessons, chat, and the parent dashboard all work on small screens. No app download required — it runs entirely in your browser.

Yes. All data is stored on AWS infrastructure in the United States. Student data is never sold or shared with third parties. Session history and progress data are only visible to the student and their linked parent. HTTPS is enforced on all pages.