The guardian feature in Google Classroom connects parents and caregivers to student information. It provides course and student work information guardians need to support student success. Because guardians are not members of the student's Classroom domain, they must receive an invitation using their email address. Once they accept the invitation, they are a Classroom guardian.
Little SIS Premium lets you take the guardian feature one step further. With Little SIS' Guardians Explorer, Admins can:
- View all invitations: active, pending, incomplete.
- Automate and sync email invitations.
- Sync guardian invitations
- Populate email addresses in Google Classroom, providing a way for teachers to reach guardians.
If you want to adopt this feature, it's important to understand how the process works. It will also help to understand how different users interact with Classroom guardians. Users include domain admins, guardians, teachers, and students. Take a look at the following Google articles. They can help you understand how the guardian feature impacts the different users:
Enabling the Guardian Feature in Google Classroom
To use the guardian feature, you first need to enable it. Once enabled, you can specify who can invite guardians; verified teachers, or only Admins.
Note: Verified teachers are accepted members of the classroom_teachers group.
Here's how to enable the guardian feature:
- In the Admin console navigate to Classroom General settings.
Main Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Classroom > General settings > Expand - Hover over the Guardian access section and click Edit.
- Check the Allow parents and guardians to access Classroom information checkbox.
- Now select who can send invitations:
-
All verified teachers: When selected, guardians can be invited or removed from a student via the Classroom students list.
OR -
Only domain administrators: When selected, teachers can only enable or disable the inclusion of their classes in guardian email summaries.
-
All verified teachers: When selected, guardians can be invited or removed from a student via the Classroom students list.
- Click Save.
Accepting Invitations
Once a guardian accepts an invite, they are the student's guardian. In other words, they have a student/guardian relationship with the student's classes. This includes all classes where the student has an invitation to have a guardian.
Once a guardian invite is sent, any of the student's other teachers can see the following in the Classroom student’s list:
- The status of the invitation
- Guardian's email address
Note: A teacher can be someone other than the one who originally sent the invitation to see this information. Likewise, after removing a guardian relationship, it is removed for all of the student's classes. In either case, a verified teacher can choose whether to include classes in guardian email summaries. Including classes is a useful way to keep guardians in the loop!
Emailing Guardians
When you use guardians, you can use the Classroom students list to email parents. Remember that their email address is visible to all the students' teachers even if the invitations are not accepted.
To send an email:
- Click Email All Guardians to email all guardians in the Classroom students list.
OR - Select specific guardians and click Email Guardians to email only the selected guardians.
This feature integrates with Gmail, using the appropriate blind carbon copy (Bcc) etiquette. This cuts down on the need for extra domain groups. It is only useful if teachers can trust that the guardian email address list is complete and accurate.
This feature integrates with Gmail, using the appropriate blind carbon copy (Bcc) etiquette. This cuts down on the need for extra domain groups. It is only useful if teachers can trust that the guardian email address list is complete and accurate.
Challenges
In our view, the native model Classroom offers, in which teachers invite / link guardians to students, creates the following challenges for districts:
- Redundant data entry creates a time-consuming chore for teachers that pulls them away from more valuable work and creates friction to full adoption.
- Inconsistent data availability across students and classes, depending on which teachers have collected parent email information on given students, makes the feature much less valuable and casts the district in a bad light.
- If there are district controls or protocols around managing official parent contact information, there is a missed opportunity to leverage this information. Also, districts may view such teacher-centric data collection as a legal risk.
By making it possible to link guardian email addresses from your SIS, Little SIS Premium solves many of these challenges.
| Document Version | Date | Description of Change |
| 1.0 | 7/30/2024 | Reverify |