You do not need to learn all of Homebook. Most days you will use three screens: attendance, your gradebook, and messages. This guide is those three, plus the questions teachers usually ask.
Your login shows the classes you teach and the families in them. Other teachers' rosters, tuition, and school-wide records are not visible to you — that is by design, not a permission you need to request.
Attendance every morning. Grades whenever you have them. Everything else can wait — and none of it is lost if you do it later.
Two things worth knowing before your first report card.
In the score box, 17, 85/50, and 80% all work. Homebook reads whichever you use. Leave a box blank to skip that student entirely.
Each student also has a code and a comment. Use them — they are the difference between a fair grade and a wrong one:
Counts as a zero. Use it when the work was never turned in.
Does not count at all — it is dropped, not scored zero. Use it when a student was not expected to do the work.
Counts normally, and the family can see it was late.
Anything you type in the comment box appears in the parent's portal next to that assignment. Short and specific beats long and vague.
If you teach Art, Music, PE, Library, Bible, or Spanish, your class is set to O / S / N / U. You will not see a score box at all — just four buttons per student. Those marks do not affect anyone's GPA.