Verify teachers and set permissions

This article is for Google Workspace for Education administrators.
Students and teachers can’t change roles or manage permissions.

As a Google Workspace for Education administrator, you can verify users as teachers in order to:

• Grant teachers access to the Classroom features they need
• Set the permissions for verified teachers for your domain

When users sign in to Classroom for the first time, they identify as teachers or students. Users who identify as teachers are automatically added as pending members to the Classroom Teachers Google group. Approve the appropriate users to verify them as teachers. This process can also be automated with the options described in the Verify teachers section.

Verified teachers have special permissions to:

• Create classes, based on class creation settings
• Manage guardians, based on guardian settings
• Access shared practice sets
• Access shared interactive questions for YouTube videos
• Access shared classwork and class templates

Identify teachers, roles, and permissions

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Verify teachers

Google administrators can verify teachers in different ways. The first step is to ensure that the Groups for Business service is on for everyone.

1. Your current account, , might not have permission to do these steps. To continue,make sure you're signed in to an administrator account.
2. In the Admin console, go to Menu Apps.
3. Click Google Workspace.
4. Click Groups for Business.
5. At the top right, click Edit Service.
6. Select On for everyone to turn on the service.

   Tip: If "Groups for Business" is turned off, teachers can't be added to the Classroom Teachers group.

7. Click Save.

To verify teachers manually on a computer:

1. In a browser window, open the Classroom Teachers group.
2. Under “People,” click Pending members.
3. Next to the user’s name, check the box.
4. On the right, click Approve applicant or Reject applicant .

Important: Be careful when you approve teacher accounts, so that you do not accidentally approve student accounts. To automate verifying teachers:

To populate the Classroom Teachers group directly, admins can use Google APIs. Some admins may choose to use Google Apps Manager (GAM). GAM is a command-line tool for admins to manage Google Workspace domains and to automate the teacher verification process.

You can add groups to the Classroom Teachers group if you:

• Use Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) or any other tool to sync groups
• Already have a group that contains all the teachers or staff in your domain

Important: If you use GCDS, you should manually exclude the Classroom Teachers Google group from any synchronizations. For details, check instructions about Google Cloud Directory Sync.

These options eliminate the need to manually approve or add members to the Classroom Teachers group.

Important: To ensure that teachers can continue to use Classroom, don't remove the Classroom Teachers group. The group is automatically re-created, but it's empty. As a result, users must identify themselves again and you must reverify the teachers.

Change a user's role from student to teacher

Students and teachers can’t change roles. Only administrators can change roles.

If a teacher identifies as a student, you must manually add the teacher to the Classroom Teachers group.

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  DirectoryUsers.
3. In the Users list, find the user.
   If you need help, see Find a user account.
4. Click the user’s name to open their account page.
5. Click GroupsAdd .
6. Choose an option:
   • Enter the name of the group you want to add the user to.

     As you enter text, Classroom shows matching groups. Click a group.

   • From the list, click a group.
7. (Optional) To add the user to another group, repeat steps 5–6.
8. Click Add.

Change a user's role from teacher to student

Students and teachers can’t change roles. Only administrators can change roles.

If a student identifies as a teacher, you must manually remove the student from the Classroom Teachers group.

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  DirectoryUsers.
3. In the Users list, find the user.
   If you need help, see Find a user account.
4. Click the user’s name to open their account page.
5. Click Groups.
6. Next to the teacher group name, check the box and on the right, click Remove.
7. Click Remove again.

Decide who can create classes

As an administrator, you can determine who can create classes in your organization.

Important: Changes you make in the Admin console might take up to 24 hours to apply to users.

1. Your current account, , might not have permission to do these steps below. To continue, make sure you sign in to an administrator account. Learn how to sign in to the Admin console.
2. On your computer, select an option:
   • Click Apps Google Workspace Classroom.
   • Click Apps Additional Google services Classroom.
3. Go to General settings.
4. Click Teacher permissions.
5. Point to "Teacher permissions" and click Edit .
6. Choose an option:
   • Anyone in this domain (teachers and students)
   • All pending and verified teachers
   • Verified teachers only
7. Click Save.

Decide who can view and manage guardians

Only verified teachers can view guardian information. You can allow verified teachers to invite and remove guardians. For details, go to Manage guardians in your domain.

Manage app and age-based access for teachers

As an administrator, you can enable or restrict app access for an individual.

• Turn a service on or off for Google Workspace users
• Control access to Google services by age

What happens if I delete a teacher account?

Before you delete a teacher's account, confirm that the teacher's classes are no longer in use by students or co-teachers. If the class is still in use, transfer class ownership to another teacher.

When a teacher's account is deleted without transferring ownership:

• The teacher loses access to Classroom.
• Their classes can no longer be transferred to someone else.
• Their classes remain available to other users, but with limited functionality.

If you need to recover classes from a deleted teacher's account, you can restore the deleted account within 20 days of deletion.

Related topic

Control user access to Classroom