This article is for education leaders and support staff.
Supported edition: Education Plus
Designated users, such as education leaders and support staff, may need to temporarily visit a class to support teachers and students. These users include but are not limited to:
- Head teachers
- Department heads
- School counsellors
- Curriculum leaders
- Administrative assistants
- Coaches and mentors
- IT admins
When education leaders and support staff visit a class, they can do anything that a co-teacher can do, including:
- Update co-teachers and students
- Post announcements
- View student profiles
When visiting a class, education leaders and support staff cannot:
- Delete a class
- Remove the primary teacher
- Mute another teacher
Tip: As an education leader or support staff member, you may get useful information from Classroom analytics. Only school administrators can grant you access to this feature. Learn more about Classroom analytics as an education leader or support staff member.
Visit a class
To visit a class, you must first have the following:- A Google Workspace for Education Plus licence assigned to you. Learn more about Google Workspace for Education editions.
- A custom admin role. This is created and assigned to you by your Workspace admin through the Admin console. Learn how your Workspace admin can designate users with temporary class access.
- On your computer, go to Google Classroom.
- On the homepage or sidebar, click Visit a class.
- To find the class that you want to visit, search for a teacher or student in that class.
- Select the teacher or student. A list of their classes will display.
- Select the class that you want to visit. If you select:
- A teacher's class:
- To open the class stream page in a new tab, click Visit class. During your visit, you can do anything that a co-teacher can do. Learn some tasks for teachers in Google Classroom.
- A student's class:
- To open the selected student's classwork page in a new tab, click View assignments.
- To go back to the class, at the top, click the class title. During your visit, you can do anything that a co-teacher can do.
- A teacher's class:
- When the class opens in a new tab, you must choose the reason(s) for your visit. The primary teacher of the class that you're visiting will get an email notification with this information.
Tips:
- If you were originally enrolled in a class as a student, you are removed from the class as a student when you visit the class. If you were originally enrolled in a class as a co-teacher, you are not removed from the class.
- When you visit a class, you have access for two hours at a time.
- If your permissions don't change, you can visit a class an unlimited number of times. If you close your browser before the two-hour visit window, you must start a new visit.
| Scenario | Action to take |
| 'Visit a class' doesn't display on your homepage. | Contact your Workspace admin and check that they have assigned you to the custom admin role that they created with the manage classes privilege. |
| The teacher or student that you search for doesn't display. | Contact your Workspace admin and ask them to check that the teacher or student is visible in your Google Directory. |
| After you've selected a teacher or student, you can't visit some of their classes. | Your organisational unit can restrict access to classes. Contact your Workspace admin and check that you're assigned the manage classes privilege for the right organisational unit. |
| When you select a class, it doesn't display. | When you select a class, it opens in a new tab. Make sure that you don't have a pop-up blocker on in your browser. |