Hi all, 

I'm at a 5th-8th grade middle school and my schedule became more flexible this year. My daily teaching assignments (media literacy special/encore) are reduced to the last 2.5 hours of the day (2 grade levels instead of 3). This is exciting because it will allow me to be more flexible with regard to kids coming down individually for checkouts, but it will also allow me to collaborate with teachers and support classroom research more.

That being said, I'm struggling with how to communicate to teachers and middle school students what times I'm available from day to day since my schedule will change with the needs of my colleagues. If I end up pushing into an 8th grade class during a time I usually would be open for checkouts.  I don't have a library clerk, so if I'm out of the library, it's unsupervised/closed. 

Does anyone have a system for communicating the library's open status from day to day? Bonus points if it's easy to access/follow.  I want to be able to update everyone in a way that's not annoying/cumbersome/one more thing to remember. Last year, if I set our ehallpass/Securly pass system to "Out of Office" with a note saying the library is closed, I still had students coming down anyway, so I'm open to anything! 😵‍💫

If you've stayed with me so far--thank you so much! 

-Nicole