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Setting Up Your Whole School: A Step-by-Step Guide for School Leaders

Welcome, School Leaders! Setting up your entire school on ClassDojo has never been easier. Our step-by-step guide will walk you through the process, ensuring that your school community is organized, connected, and ready for a fantastic school year. From adding teachers and students to setting up classes and communication channels, we've got you covered. Follow these simple steps to set up your whole school on ClassDojo and create a vibrant, engaging learning environment for everyone!

1. Sign up as a School Leader 

If you haven’t already, sign up for a school leader account at your school using your school email address if you have one. 

2. Add or join your school

Join your school to be part of your school community on ClassDojo. Search for your school listing in our system and if your school isn’t on ClassDojo yet, you can add it. 

3. Get your School Leader account school-approved 

Learn how to get school-approved here.

4. Upload your student roster

Option #1: If your school is new to ClassDojo or you see that you do not have any students in your School's Directory, you can upload your school roster from a Word document or a .CSV spreadsheet. If you already know the parents' email addresses, you can upload them at the same time. Note that an email will be sent to parents notifying them that they have been invited to your school but they will not see their child's class information in their account until the student is added to a class.

Option #2: If you already have students in your Directory, you can wait until your teachers have created their accounts and are all verified, and then have each teacher add their students to their class. Teachers will be able to add students already existing in your Directory to their class and for those students that are not already in the Directory, they can add them to their class. When a verified teacher adds a student to their class, this student is automatically added to your School Directory.

Please Note: It is helpful to come up with a plan for your staff that determines which class(es) each teacher will create and pull students into. For example, you may decide that all teachers will only create and add students to their homeroom class. This will help avoid duplicate classes and students from being created. 

5. Have teachers create their accounts

Have teachers create a teacher account and request to join your school.  You can also invite teachers directly from your School Directory. Make sure they use their school email address and verify their email. You can also approve them from the School Directory within your account.

If a teacher already has an account, they can request to join your school or change their school affiliation from within their account. 

6. Create classes

Option #1: As a school leader, you can create all the classes for the new school year and add the students to each class, however this will make you the owner of every class. You can remain the class owner and add teachers to the classes as co-teachers, however your name will be the teacher name associated with every class instead of the teacher teaching the class. If you want to transfer ownership of a class to the teacher leading the class, you can do so by adding them as a co-teacher first and then making them the owner of the class, which then makes you a co-teacher in the class.

Option #2: Have teachers create their classes and add their students. As they type student names, they’ll be able to select them from your school’s Directory.  After adding students they can print parent invites or invite parents to connect to the class via email.

Please Note That once a family is connected to their child's profile in the School Directory, they do not need to connect again. When their child is added to a new class each year, the connected family member will automatically become connected to the new class!

7. Share classes with staff 

Teachers can also share the class with as many co-teachers, specials teachers, aides, and School Leaders as they want!

School leaders are able to be added as a co-teacher to each class in order to have access to all classes, but all messages in those classes will remain private within accounts.

8. Create Consistency School-Wide by Setting School-Wide Skills

Learn about schoolwide points here

9. Welcome families to your school community! 

You can now post to School Story for all families to see. Teachers can share lessons, updates, and more with their students and families on Class Story or create activities for students to respond to from home on their student portfolios.