I'm not a teacher. She is.
PlanSpark was built by a software developer who spent years listening to a veteran elementary teacher describe what she actually needed — and then built it.
I want to start with the most important thing about PlanSpark, and it's something most education companies would bury: I have never taught in a K–12 classroom in my life.
I'm a software developer. What I do have is a front-row seat to one. For 31 years, I've been with my wife Angela, who has spent more than 30 years teaching elementary school. I've watched her grade papers at the kitchen table at 10 p.m. I've heard about the lesson that looked perfect on paper and fell apart in the classroom. I've seen what it costs to plan for 28 kids who are all in different places.
PlanSpark exists because of those conversations. Every decision in this product traces back to something she said about what real teaching actually requires — not what an app developer imagines teaching requires.
Why I built it
The honest origin story: I kept watching her do the same time-consuming work over and over — adapting a reading passage for different levels, writing the same kind of parent email, building an assessment that actually matched what she taught — and as a developer, I couldn't stop thinking "this should be faster."
But I didn't want to build "another AI tool for teachers." There are a lot of those now, and most of them are a drawer full of 80 disconnected gadgets. Angela didn't need 80 tools. She needed her actual workflow to be faster: start with the standard, build the lesson, figure out whether it'll land with her class, then create the assessment that matches.
So that's what PlanSpark is. One connected workflow — standards to lesson to simulation to assessment — instead of a pile of one-off generators. The thing I'm proudest of, the Lesson Plan Simulator, came directly from her describing the part of planning that AI couldn't help with: not writing the lesson, but knowing whether it would work before standing up in front of the room. So we built something to help with exactly that.
Meet Ms. Spark
You'll meet Ms. Spark throughout PlanSpark — she's the voice of the product, the one writing the tips and answering your questions in the chat.
Ms. Spark isn't a marketing mascot we invented in a meeting. She's the voice of those 30 years of classroom experience. When she sounds like she's been there — like she knows what a Friday afternoon with a class of second-graders actually feels like — it's because the experience behind her is real.
How I think about AI in your classroom
One thing I feel strongly about, and I'll say it plainly: PlanSpark is a tool, not a replacement for your judgment.
The AI drafts. You decide.
Every lesson, every assessment, every word of feedback PlanSpark generates is a starting point that you review, change, and make your own. You know your students. The software doesn't. PlanSpark's job is to give you back the hours — the Sunday nights, the late evenings — so you can spend your energy on the part only a teacher can do.
I built it for one teacher I love. If it gives you back even a fraction of the time it's given her, it's doing its job.
Where PlanSpark is headed
PlanSpark is independent and self-funded — there's no investor telling me to add features nobody asked for. That means I can keep it focused, keep it affordable ($6/month, with a 7-day free trial and no credit card to start), and build what teachers actually tell me they need.
If you're a teacher, I'd love for you to try it. And if something's missing or broken, tell me — there's a real person on the other end of that feedback, and it's usually me.