I LOVE it when my students come in to talk to me about their work and grades in my class but I really love it when I know they are coming and I know what they want to visit about. Since I teach primarily upper grade classes I post “office hours” on my door because I know that will be a good transition into college for students.

In the past, I’ve just asked kids to tell me ahead of time that they are coming. But this year I have set up a “You Book Me” link on my website. It integrates with my school district Google calendar and was pretty simple to set up. When an appointment is scheduled students will even be asked to tell me what we are meeting about, so I can be prepared to give feedback on writing, clarification on an assignment, etc.

I set it up with a custom URL offered by youbook.me and then followed the directions. It integrates nicely but you don’t want kids trying to book appointments during other classes so it’s important to create “appointments” in your Google Calendar that will block out those times – I even made it so kids can’t book times during my conference period so I can make sure to get focused work done during that time.

You can customize the appointment lengths, start/end times (helpful for schools with odd bell schedules), color of your calendar, etc. If you are trying to set one up and hit a wall, ask me for help! It took a little finagling for me to get it just right and that may be the case for you, too.

The image on my website takes students to the booking calendar

My booking calendar has grayed out times for when I am in class, so students can only choose before school, after school, and lunch

blocked out time in my Google Calendar

I created two blocks of classes and then made them repeat on weekdays