Back to Basics? Teachers Are Reaching for Paper, Pencils, and Hands-On Learning

Summary for Educators

Based on Emma Kate Fittes

“Teacher Demand for Pen-and-Paper, Hands-On Work on the Rise, Survey Finds”

EdWeek Market Brief | September 3, 2026

New survey data from DonorsChoose suggests an intriguing shift in American classrooms: after years of steadily increasing digital learning, many teachers are asking for more printed books, paper-based materials, manipulatives, and other physical resources. In the survey, 63% of educators said they were requesting more physical learning materials than they had two years earlier. (Marketbrief)

🔵 THE BIG IDEA

This is not necessarily a rejection of educational technology. It may represent something more interesting: teachers are becoming more selective about when technology actually improves learning.

The DonorsChoose survey included 2,501 public school teachers, most working in historically underfunded schools. When educators were asked what significant changes they had made during the year to address student needs, reducing technology use and increasing hands-on and paper-based learning emerged as one of the most frequently mentioned categories. (Marketbrief)

Some teachers reported returning to pencil and paper for particular activities, including essay writing and demonstrating reading skills. Meanwhile, technology has hardly disappeared: 32% said AI is important to students' future education, and 39% considered AI important or very important for their own instructional or administrative work. (Marketbrief)

The emerging question, therefore, isn't digital or paper?

It is which tool produces the best learning for this particular task?

🔵 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR EDUCATORS

• Physical materials are making a comeback. Nearly two-thirds of surveyed educators reported requesting more physical materials than two years ago. (Marketbrief)

• Teachers are reconsidering screen-dependent instruction. Seven states had enacted legislation or directives addressing classroom devices and digital tools since the beginning of 2026, while major districts have also introduced new limits or guidelines. (Marketbrief)

• Pen and paper are being used strategically. The reporting describes teachers choosing handwriting for specific purposes such as essays and reading demonstrations rather than abandoning technology altogether. (Marketbrief)

• Hands-on learning remains important. Physical books, manipulatives, writing materials, art supplies, laboratory materials, and other tangible resources offer learning experiences that screens cannot always replicate.

• AI complicates the picture. Teachers can simultaneously want students spending less time passively on screens while believing that students need to learn how to use powerful emerging technologies intelligently. The survey reflects precisely that tension. (Marketbrief)

• The larger story includes student poverty. DonorsChoose also found increasing numbers of teachers purchasing basic necessities for students—including food, clothing, and hygiene products—out of their own pockets. (Marketbrief)

◻️ WHY IT MATTERS

For years, school technology decisions often followed an implicit assumption: more digital meant more modern.

That assumption deserves reconsideration.

The better question for instructional leaders is whether the medium matches the learning objective.

A Chromebook may be ideal when students are researching, collaborating, coding, analyzing large datasets, receiving adaptive feedback, or learning to use AI responsibly.

But another lesson may be better served by students closing their laptops, picking up pencils, annotating a printed text, sketching a scientific model, building something with manipulatives, conducting an experiment, discussing a novel around a table, or drafting an argument without digital distractions.

That is not nostalgia.

It is instructional intentionality.

The EdWeek findings are especially significant because they capture classroom-level decisions teachers say they are already making. The shift toward physical materials is occurring alongside—not instead of—interest in AI and other technologies. (Marketbrief)

The future classroom may therefore be neither predominantly digital nor defiantly analog.

It may be deliberately hybrid.

🟢 LEADERSHIP ACTION STEPS

✓ Audit classroom screen use by instructional purpose rather than simply counting devices or minutes.

✓ Ask teachers where digital tools demonstrably improve learning—and where they may interfere with attention, discussion, writing, reading, creativity, or hands-on exploration.

✓ Protect budgets for physical materials. A 1:1 device program should not mean teachers lack books, paper, manipulatives, laboratory supplies, art materials, or other basic instructional resources.

✓ Encourage teachers to make deliberate medium choices: Why is this activity digital? Why is this one on paper?

✓ Observe whether students are actively creating, discussing, writing, manipulating, solving, and thinking—or simply moving from one screen-based activity to another.

✓ Develop an AI strategy that does not automatically become a screen-time strategy. Students need AI literacy, but that does not require every learning experience to become digital.

✓ Listen closely to teachers. The DonorsChoose findings reinforce an important leadership principle: classroom educators often detect changing student needs before those changes appear in formal policy. (Marketbrief)

🟡 LEADER REFLECTION

Walk through your school tomorrow and ask one simple question:

If the screens suddenly disappeared, what kinds of learning would remain?

Then reverse the question:

If the pencils, paper, books, manipulatives, art supplies, laboratory materials, and face-to-face conversations disappeared, what kinds of learning would we lose?

The goal should not be to choose between the classroom of 1996 and the classroom of 2026.

It should be to create a classroom in which teachers confidently choose the best tool for the learning they want students to do.

Sometimes that tool will be artificial intelligence.

And sometimes it will be a 20-cent pencil.

Original Article

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com