School District Settings and Best Practices

  • Students are not allowed to create accounts, nor do they sign in to the Zoom platform to access their teachers; they use a private, secured link given to them by their classroom teacher. 

  • Students are not allowed to join the meeting before the teacher arrives.

  • Passwords are required for meetings.

  • Teachers may temporarily remove an attendee from the meeting.

  • Teachers are the only ones allowed to share the screen (by default).

Teacher Best Practices

BEFORE class begins, the teacher sets the meeting controls in their Zoom settings to:

  • Restrict annotation to prevent students from annotating on shared content or show the names of individuals annotating.

  • Disable “Join before host” so students can’t join the meeting before the teacher is ready.

  • Require a meeting passcode to join.

  • Disable screen sharing for users (students must ask for permission to share).

  • Teachers review Responsible Use and Digital Citizenship guidelines with students.


DURING the meeting,  the teacher uses the “Security” button to:

  • Lock the virtual classroom once class starts so no one else can enter.

  • Force all new participants joining a meeting to enter the Waiting Room (where the teacher can admit them on an individual basis).

  • Enable or disable participants from sharing their screens.

  • Disable the chat feature to prevent participants from chatting with each other.


DURING the meeting, the teacher uses the “Participants” button to manage students’ audio/video:

  • Disable video for all or individual students. Note: Teachers have the “Mute/Unmute Individual” option in Zoom for situations where students may not have the ability to unmute themselves, such as:

    1. Classes for grades K–2, who may not know how to operate their microphones. 

    2. Classes where students have physical or other constraints preventing them from accessing the mute controls. 

    3. Physical exercise classes where students may be placed at a distance from their devices.

    4. Music lessons where a student is playing an instrument.

  • Remove participants from the meeting (and they are not allowed to rejoin) or place participants in the waiting room (where they can be readmitted).



Zoom Meeting Security and Participant In-Meeting controls screenshot









For more information on how to use Zoom for Video Conferencing, please visit the link below:


https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362033-Getting-Started-on-PC-and-Mac