Five routes to one school email — substitute or aide job in weeks, Goodstack check, a free year of Claude at $0 
① PICK YOUR ROUTE → ② FOLLOW THE STEPS → ③ CLAIM → ④ KEEP IT
Claude for Teachers gives you a free Claude for Teams account for a year: Pro-level features, Claude Code, Cowork, Team usage limits. No card is ever asked for. Sign up by 30 June 2027. The whole gate is one thing — a school email address on a real school domain. Below is exactly how to get that address, step by step, even when you hold nothing today.
The whole flow on one picture
Step 0 — pick your route
| What you hold today | Route | Time to the seat |
|---|---|---|
| You live in the US and can take a part-time school job | 1 Teacher | weeks |
| You run a real school | 2 School | weeks |
| You work in a research lab | 3 Scientist | about a week |
| You are enrolled at a partner university | 4 Campus | same day |
| You want premium today, with no paperwork | 5 Start now | minutes |
The shortcuts that save the most time
- The school email is the one key that matters — every other step exists to produce it
- One document is enough: a recent payslip clears the check on its own
- Classroom aides and substitutes count as staff, exactly like teachers
- One school application covers every educator on the domain
- No card, ever, on an individual educator account
- The deadline is 30 June 2027, so the job hunt fits inside it comfortably
Route 1 — the teacher road, the fastest real unlock
Why it works: the offer covers every staff member at a US K-12 school or district — teachers, classroom aides and substitutes included. Staff get a school email, a staff ID and a payslip. Those three are exactly what the checker reads.
Step 1 · Get hired as a substitute or an aide
- Apply on the district portal — Frontline, AppliTrack, EdJoin, or the district’s own careers page
- Finish the fingerprint and background check — about 49 dollars in Texas
- Take the district orientation — usually short online videos
- Work your first paid day — substitute pay runs about 85 to 260 dollars a day
Florida, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky and Kansas hire substitutes with a high-school diploma.
Step 2 · Collect the three keys
- School email — an address on the school’s own domain, never a personal one
- Staff ID — the badge the district issues on your first day
- Payslip — the most recent one, original, no redactions
Step 3 · Claim the free year
- Sign in at claude.ai with the school email
- Open the Claude for Teachers page and press Get verified
- Goodstack opens — search your school by its legal name
- Upload one document from the accepted list
- Wait — Goodstack runs within 72 hours, and Claude confirms in under 24 hours on most days
- The confirmation mail lands, refresh the page, and the premium account is live
Step 4 · Keep it
- You re-verify from time to time, so keep the job and the school email alive
- No card is ever requested on an individual educator account
🧾 The three keys, in full
One document is enough. Pick whichever you can get first.
| Document | What it proves |
|---|---|
| Teacher or staff ID card | your current role at the school |
| Teaching licence | your state credential for the role |
| Employment confirmation letter | school name, role and dates |
| Employment contract | your signed terms of the post |
| Most recent payslip | an ongoing paid role |
Rules: original files only, no redactions, JPG or PNG or PDF, up to 5 MB each. Employment letters carry a digital signature.
Route 2 — the school road, one application covers a whole staff
Why it works: an authorised admin at a real school applies once, proves the domain, and the whole staff walks in. Every educator on the domain lands inside the free first year.
Step 1 · Stand up a real school and a domain
- Register the school with the state — the Kansas non-accredited private school notice files online at no cost
- Buy a domain, then point free email routing at it so every address on the domain works
- Set the website live, because the checker reads it
Step 2 · Apply as the authorised admin
- Open claude.ai/k12districts, confirm you are authorised to set up school technology, accept the K-12 terms
- One application stays open per email domain
- Goodstack confirms the school and your role, then mails you the link to the new organisation
Step 3 · Prove the domain
- Add the domain in the dashboard and copy the TXT record it shows — the value begins with
anthropic-domain-verification- - Publish that record at the root of the domain, beside the records already there
- Press Verify — seats open and the free first year applies on its own
Step 4 · Bring the staff in
- Connect single sign-on through your identity provider
- Press Migrate accounts to open the 30-day window for existing accounts
- Everyone who joins later signs in with the school address
🧰 Tools for Route 2
- Domain and mail: developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing (free, unlimited addresses), zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html (free, 5 users)
- School filing: apps.ksde.gov/naps_form/default.aspx
- Registry check: nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/privateschoolsearch
- DNS check: mxtoolbox.com/TXTLookup.aspx
- Official guides: support.claude.com/en/articles/16559896 · support.claude.com/en/articles/13132885
🔬 Routes 3 and 4 — scientist and campus
Route 3 · Scientist — no teaching status needed
- Affiliate with a research group or lab at a university or a research nonprofit
- The lab lead applies for the Team plan for scientists: free Standard seats, 12 months, 1 to 25 seats, verified in about a week
- Claude Code, Cowork and the science tools come inside those seats
claude.com/programs/team-plan-for-scientists
Route 4 · Campus — the student road
- Enrol at a Claude for Education partner university
- Sign in with the campus single sign-on, the .edu address
- Premium stays open while you are enrolled
- claude.com/solutions/education
⚡ Route 5 — start now, with no paperwork
- Free tier — chat, files, web search, on the free account
- 5 dollars of API credit — phone verification, around 14 days of build time
- AWS free tier — up to 200 dollars, enough to run Claude Code on Bedrock
- Google Cloud trial — 300 dollars for 90 days, Claude through Vertex
- OpenRouter free models and Poe free points — daily caps, no card
- Guest Pass — a Max subscriber friend can hand you 7 free Pro days from their account
claude.com/pricing
aws.amazon.com/free
cloud.google.com/free
openrouter.ai/models
📜 The readiness script — run it before you file anything
Save this as claude-year-check.sh and run it on your school domain. Four green lines mean the paperwork side is ready.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# claude-year-check.sh — run before you file the domain
# usage: bash claude-year-check.sh yourschool.org
D="${1:?usage: bash claude-year-check.sh <school-domain>}"
echo "1. domain-proof record"
dig +short TXT "$D" | grep -i "anthropic-domain-verification" \
|| echo " add the TXT record shown in the dashboard"
echo "2. mail records"
dig +short MX "$D"
dig +short TXT "$D" | grep -i "v=spf1" || echo " add an SPF record so school mail lands"
echo "3. site answers"
curl -sI "https://$D" | head -1
echo "4. domain settled"
whois "$D" | grep -iE "creation date|created" | head -1
echo "done — four green lines means the paperwork side is ready"
For the teacher road, one command proves the mailbox works:
echo "hello from my school inbox" | mail -s test [email protected]
Five words that matter here
- professional email — an address on the school’s own domain
- domain proof — the TXT record that ties your domain to the account
- Goodstack — the checker behind the offer
- K-12 — school years before university, the level this offer covers
- single sign-on — how a school or district hands out seats
Questions people ask
- Do I need to be a teacher? No — every staff member at a US K-12 school or district counts, aides and substitutes included.
- Do I need a degree? For a substitute role, no in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky and Kansas.
- Do I need a card? Never — billing is switched off on an individual educator account.
- My school is not in the checker’s list. Add it through the “can’t find my institution” step and supply the name, country and website.
- Not in the US? Routes 2 to 5 stay open.
- I am a student. Access flows through a partner campus, in Route 4.
- The first year ends. You re-verify from time to time to keep educator access active.
Pick your route, follow the steps one at a time — claim before 30 June 2027.
The Core-Community team has AI-upgraded the topic above.
!