DeGoogle Yourself

I'm going to go against the grain slightly and say that it's not as bad as you might think. Schools and businesses have deals with Google when they pay for the software. Google is not allowed to scan everything to train Gemini the same way that they do for a personal free Google account.

That being said, it's always best practices to disconnect work/school and personal activities, for a wide variety of reasons. The more present threat is the work/school being able to see everything you do on the device. Like, EVERYTHING, sometimes even keystrokes. Furthermore, using your personal third party accounts will increase the attack surface by Google and your school/employer being able to associate the service and/or account with you. So at the end of the day, don't do anything personal on school/work devices, and you can't get burned by either party.

First and easiest thing would be doing as much of your work offline as you can. Avoid uploading to Google Drive or starting documents on G-Suite, except where practically unavoidable, I'd imagine:

• Group projects
• Assignments published to Google Classroom with no alternative submission options (print, email, etc.)
• Official correspondence through school-provided Gmail

If your school district distributes Chromebooks,

• Do you have / can you afford your own laptop?
• Does your school allow personal laptops to connect to their network, or allow having one at all?
• Are there situations where use of your Chromebook is mandatory and could force you to carry two laptops?

If you have your own computer, only log in to your school account in a separate browser or browser profile. And of course, if you are in the market for a laptop, consider used and refurbished options instead of whatever pre-made e-waste they are selling brand new for $200.

About formatting concerns, since you're on Lemmy, before posting, there's a view button near the bottom of the post form. Main reason I return to my Lemmy alt. =)

About your issue, not an US citizen myself so can't check details as easily, but considering what I can tell from the outside, I'd suggest first seeing if laws for your specific town, county or state, or even the federal ones, make Google adoption opt-in or opt-out. That also could require confirming with an attorney to be safe, which would likely cost money.

There are unfortunately going to be aspects of your life where you have to use Google. School, and later your job being major ones. If your teacher/boss says you have to use Google, you are going to use Google. With much love for the teachers, many are not good with technology and the convenience of Google makes their job easier.

Like many of us do at our jobs, just use Google to the minimum extent possible and try to minimize the personal information you give to Google. Then you can live the De-Google life in your free time.

This is probably not the answer you wanted, but it's the practical one. Sometimes being the one person going against the grain can put a target on your back and you don't want to get on the teacher's bad side.

Of course, if your teacher is open to allowing you to use other tools, that's great. I just wouldn't get your hopes up.