Pinterest for School Libraries

August 2020--I am in my first year as a librarian. Besides transitioning districts, I am also trying to figure out how to support my teachers in their instruction, digital technology, and training them on new ed-tech. Then there are the logistics for my library space, the rules, displays, and passive engagement activities within the parameters of the current pandemic that are filling my brain. Inspiration was hard to drum up as I felt overwhelmed with the new additions of safety, sanitizing, and just becoming more vigilant in providing digital resources for students and staff to use during this time. I knew entering into this position, I would be an island and, maybe even more so, with the dynamics caused by COVID.
    Inspiration is a necessity for me. If I lack inspiration, I struggle to encourage it in others, and wherever I searched Google for help in an area concerning the library, Pinterest tags would pop up. It evoked memories of when I first learned of Pinterest. Honestly, it was the TikTok in 2012-2015 for me. Countless hours were spent scrolling through pins and creating boards. Whether it was the perfect outfit or hairstyle, or the myriad recipes I dreamt of trying, Pinterest was where I constructed a fantastical image of who I wanted to be both personally. It wasn’t too long until I made teaching boards.
When I got my first teaching job, I used Pinterest to help me brainstorm ideas for my lessons. I always pushed myself to make my lessons engaging and relevant to my students. When I was lesson planning, and I needed a boost, Pinterest was often my go-to answer. It then would lead me to countless educators’ blogs and specific education-minded websites that I saved and revisited. As the years passed, I still found myself revisiting these boards less and less as I grew in my teaching abilities.
Fast-forward to this past school year. My first as a school librarian. When my inspiration was in short supply, Pinterest became the place to inspire the design of my new library, the displays, the lessons, and the many other things I would be doing in my day-to-day. This certainly was true. The sheer number of ideas I gained was overwhelming. Whether it was pins from public libraries, school libraries, or academic libraries, I found positivity and inspiration. Pinterest became the place where I was no longer on an island but in a land of like-minded professionals. Pinterest helped me continue to be a positive light in my school to innovate and create, despite all added pandemic and hybrid/remote learning stressors. And by extension, I saw an opportunity to provide support to my teachers.
In December 2020, while working on my Smore newsletter layout, I stumbled upon Stephen Stewart’s 5 Tech Tips for Winter Break newsletter. One of his main tips was that teachers should take time to revisit ideas that had provided inspiration to help revitalize themselves for the upcoming second semester. This is where I had a lightbulb, “a-ha,” moment. I connected the idea proposed by Stewart’s newsletter and using Pinterest as the tool to constantly give teachers access to ideas that could cultivate inspiration, innovation, and creativity in their teaching. Isn’t it usually the case when we stumble on ideas that strike our teaching fancy, we often forget to save? This is why I thought Pinterest could be that curated holding-place for my teachers. 
Here is what I did. First, I created a separate board for each content area at my school. [For elementary, I could see you doing this by grade level and specials.] Next, I curated these boards with content-specific lesson ideas and activities; I only included those that addressed the established curriculum. But to be honest, inspiration often guided my pinning. After I began curating pins and had some for each board, I emailed the respective teachers to become collaborators. Later on, I created a board for the guidance counselor to help her brainstorm bulletin boards for the guidance office after she saw the curated Pinboards in my newsletter. She just recently came and asked to start a new board to help her find career-readiness unit ideas.
While Pinterest boards do not have analytics provided to help you see how often they are accessed, it is a way that you can provide resources for your teachers, and they can access them 24/7. Currently, my guidance counselor, art teacher, and one math teacher have spoken to me about how I can help them implement some of the pins I have shared via these boards in their teaching next year. It has opened up avenues of conversation that I never imagined it would. One bit of advice I have is to encourage your teachers to add pins themselves. Truly make this a collaborative effort between you and your teachers. Though this is a “passive” form of engagement, it seems to achieve several of the AASL framework’s domains and shared foundations, and all it took was a little bit of scrolling, pinning, and sharing.

Joy Clements
School Librarian
Gross Catholic High School
Bellevue, NE

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