Guest access

How families open the class materials Russian School Erudite shares from Microsoft 365.

Erudite Russian Language Educational and Cultural Center, Inc. Last updated 2026-09-19.

Erudite shares class materials, schedules, and forms through Microsoft 365. Parents, guardians, and invited teachers open them as guests, using the email address the school already has for your family. This page explains how that sign-in works, including the Sign in with Google option.

Where your invitation comes from

The school already has your email address from the enrollment form, or from your child's teacher. That is the address an invitation is sent to, and it is the address you have to sign in with. A different personal account will not have access, even if it belongs to you.

Signing in

1. You receive an email invitation from Microsoft Invitations, sent on behalf of Russian School Erudite.

2. Open it and choose Accept invitation.

3. If your address ends in @gmail.com or @googlemail.com, Microsoft sends you straight to Google's own sign-in page. Sign in there with that same Google account. If your address is an Outlook, Hotmail, or Live address, sign in with your Microsoft account instead. If it is a work or school address of any other kind, including one hosted on Google Workspace, write to us and we will arrange access a different way. For any other provider, such as Yahoo or Comcast, you will be sent a one time passcode by email; enter the code that arrives.

4. Google asks you to approve the sign-in, and names the app Erudite. Choose Continue.

5. Microsoft then shows a Review permissions page saying the school will see your name, photo, and email address. Choose Accept.

6. The first time only, the school's security settings ask you to add a second step: the Microsoft Authenticator app, or a text message to your phone. Do this once and you will not be asked again on that device for a while.

7. You are taken to the materials. If you followed a link to a particular folder, you land in that folder. If you accepted the invitation from the email on its own, you land on a Microsoft page listing what you can open, which may look empty until a teacher shares something with you.

What the school asks Google for

• Your name, your email address, and the basic profile information Google shows you on that approval screen, which can include your profile picture and your language setting.

• Nothing else. The school requests no access to Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Calendar, Photos, or any other Google service, and cannot read, send, or change anything in your Google account.

• Never your password. You type that on Google's own page, and the school never sees it.

Why Google sign-in

A code mailed to you is no longer considered a sound way to prove who you are, and it is easy to miss in a spam folder. Signing in with an account you already protect is simpler and safer. Email passcodes remain available for families whose address is with neither Google nor Microsoft.

How to tell this is really from the school

An email that says "click here and sign in with your Google account" is also what a scam looks like, so it is worth knowing what the real one looks like.

• The invitation comes from Microsoft on behalf of Russian School Erudite, and it asks you to sign in to Erudite. That is the name Google will show you.

• You type your password only on Google's own page, at accounts.google.com, or on Microsoft's, at login.microsoftonline.com. Check the address bar. The school will never host a page that asks for your Google password, and will never ask you for it by email, by phone, or in a chat.

• The school will never ask you to pay anything, or to enter a card number, to get access to materials.

• If anything looks off, do not click. Write to info@russianerudite.com or call the school, and we will tell you whether it was us.

If something does not work

• No invitation. Check the spam folder for a message from Microsoft Invitations, or for a sharing notice from no-reply@sharepointonline.com. If it is not there, write to info@russianerudite.com and we will send it again.

• Access denied, or the wrong account. If your browser is signed in to more than one Google account, which is common in a household, the link may open under the wrong one. Sign out of the others, or open the link in a private window, then use the address the invitation was sent to.

• The link opened inside an app. If you tapped the link from a mail app and the page will not let you sign in, open the same link in Safari or Chrome instead.

• You already had access. If your family has opened these materials in a previous year, keep using them as before. You may notice that signing in now goes through Google. That is expected, and nothing was taken away.

• Still stuck. Write to us. Nobody needs to solve this alone, and an access problem is never your fault.

Privacy

What the school receives, how it is used, how long it is kept, and how to have it deleted are set out in the privacy policy.

Contact

Email: info@russianerudite.com

Phone: (202) 549-7277 and (240) 630-1030

Campus: Silver Creek Middle School, 3701 Saul Rd, Kensington, MD 20895, Saturdays 9:00 am to 3:00 pm

Mailing address: 4104 Chippendale Ct, Rockville, MD 20853

Erudite Russian Language Educational and Cultural Center, Inc. Sign-in is provided through Microsoft Entra ID External Identities. Google and Microsoft are sign-in providers only and are not affiliated with the school.