Parents/Guardians and Google Classroom

Families, parents and guardians by default do not have access to their students' Google Classroom work and assignments. Google does offer an option for them to get more involved with their student's schoolwork progress, via emailed Daily/Weekly summaries of Classroom work. For them to receive these emailed updates, teachers will need to explicitly invite parents/guardians to their children's Google classes, which grants them permission to sign up for emailed summaries in Google Classroom.

NOTE: Students should not log into the Google Classroom app (or web site) on the parents' devices with their CA accounts - due to school login account privacy concerns i.e. CA accounts should not be shared, and a possibility that families may unwittingly make changes to the student's class work.

The CA Tech Office has written up this step-by-step guide for faculty to help students' families get invited to their classes and get emailed updates:

Inviting parents/guardians to Google Classroom

Here is how you can send invite guardians into your class to provide them the option to get daily or weekly updates:

Go to the Google Classroom class menu and select "People", look for the student whose parents/guardians wish to get updates, and click on "Invite guardians":

2. Type the parent/guardian's email address(es) and click on it when it appears in the list:

3. Once you see the email(s) has been registered as an entry, click on the "Invite" button:

4. Uncheck the box to "Add all the classes" (since you probably don't want to invite this parent/guardian to all the classes that you are teaching), then click on "Add class" to include this class in the parent/guardian's email summaries:

5. The parents/guardians should now receive an email about being invited as a guardian. They will need to accept the invitation from you by clicking on the "Accept invite" link (or copy the link from it and pasting it into their web browser's address bar if they wish to confirm it is indeed coming from Google Classroom and is not a phishing email :)

6. If the parent/guardian is certain they are ready to receive summaries of their student in that particular email address, they can click on "Accept":

7. Once the email summary option for your Class has been accepted, the parents/guardians will be taken to the Google Classroom web site where they can adjust the frequency of their student's Google Classroom summaries (Weekly or Daily) emailed to them:

NOTE: Families can always return to this same web page to make changes to the email summary options.

If you or families have any additional inquiries about these emailed summaries from Google Classroom, please reach out to the CA Tech Office for further assistance!