A New Website on Technology and Society

Zach Rausch and Jonathan Haidt (author of The Anxious Generation) just launched this website with comprehensive, free research and publications on smartphones and social media, educational technology, AI and emerging technologies, technology across the lifespan, online gaming, gambling, and pornography, global adolescent health, technology policy evaluation, and sociology and history of technology 

 “After Babel: Tech and Society Lab at NYU Stern” October 2026

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1156 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Intentionally Designing Instruction to Maximize EL's Learning

            In this article in Language Magazine, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University and Health Sciences High and Middle College) say students’ behavior may suggest they’re engaged – hands raised, looking at the teacher, doing the work. But that “does not necessarily reveal how deeply students are thinking,” say Fisher and Frey, “how connected they feel to the classroom community, or whether they see themselves as capable learners.”

            This is especially important for English learners, who may be cognitively engaged but holding back for fear of saying something incorrectly. “Silence, therefore, should not automatically be interpreted as disengagement,” say Fisher and Frey. They urge teachers to be proactive, designing the classroom environment to maximize engagement for all students.

• Begin with invitation. Two questions on ELs’ minds: Is my thinking wanted here? Does it have to be expressed in grammatically correct English? Teachers can address these uncertainties by making a point of welcoming contributions from all students, encouraging them to share their thinking, and giving students the chance to rehearse ideas with partners before speaking in front of the class. It’s also helpful to use visuals to support communication and connect curriculum content to students’ prior experiences.
• Make belonging visible. “Students continually notice who gets heard, who receives support, whose ideas are taken seriously, and who seems to matter,” say Fisher and Frey. ELs need to get the message that they belong and their participation is genuinely welcomed. This means pronouncing their names correctly, including community and cultural references in lessons, calling on all students (including the quiet ones), expanding on their responses, and not allowing students to be interrupted by classmates.
• Make learning clear without making it easy. “Clarity does not mean simplifying the intellectual work,” say Fisher and Frey. Teachers need to communicate robust learning goals “in accessible language, unpacking important vocabulary, modeling processes, providing examples and nonexamples, using visuals and demonstrations, checking understanding frequently, and making success criteria visible.”
• Protect the challenge while providing the support. ELs “need access to the same rich thinking, complex texts, interesting problems, academic conversations, and intellectually demanding experiences as their peers,” say the authors. “The teacher’s task, then, is not to remove struggle but to distinguish between productive struggle and unnecessary barriers… The principle is simple: scaffold access, not thinking… Students might examine a diagram before reading, discuss observations with a partner, annotate a text, use sentence frames when helpful, sketch their thinking, or rehearse an explanation before sharing it publicly.”
• Expand what counts as participation. Fisher and Frey urge teachers to look beyond conventional notions of engagement and ask, “Are students making meaning? Are they interacting with ideas? Are they explaining their thinking to someone? Are they asking questions? Are they revising their thinking? Are they using feedback? Are they connecting new learning to what they already know?”
• Building voice and agency. Intentionally shift from students responding to the teacher’s questions and receiving support (which are important) to students themselves asking questions, requesting clarification, seeking feedback, expressing preferences, monitoring their progress, adjusting the strategies they’re using, and contributing ideas as learning unfolds. This is especially important, say the authors, in moving ELs from uncertainty to confidence. 

“Designing Engagement for Multilingual Learners” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in Language Magazine, September 2026 (Vol. 26, #1, pp. 23-25); the authors can be reached at dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu and nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1156 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Keys to Effective Teaching of Algebra

             In this article in Mathematics Teacher, Jill Newton (Purdue University) says that when she returned to a classroom during a sabbatical, she encountered many of the same challenges she’d experienced in her years as a high-school math teacher – plus some new ones: enforcing the school’s cellphone policy, a high rate of student absenteeism, and the pressure of standardized testing.

            As she re-immersed herself in teaching algebra, Newton compiled a list of what she wished she’d known as a new teacher. “I loved my students,” she says, “supported them, and did what I was taught to do, but as they say, When you know better, you can do better.” Here are her suggestions to her younger self – and other teachers of algebra: 

• Help students see the bigger picture of algebra – conceptual understanding and connections across algebraic procedures and topics. This is more helpful, says Newton, than breaking down algebraic procedures to the smallest steps.
• Discuss the uses of variables with students – for example, unknown, constant, argument, parameter, label, and varying quantity. Discussing conceptions of variables, Newton has found, really enhances students’ understanding of algebra.
• Give students opportunities to investigate strategies and make decisions about selecting methods for solving. “Learning when and why to use an algebraic procedure is just as important as learning how to use it,” she says.
• Facilitate students’ thinking about taking algebraic objects apart, putting them back together, and transforming them. Thinking about “doing” and “undoing” in algebra helps develop students’ procedural fluency and conceptual understanding.
• Begin with the idea of function families, and work with students to summarize their properties and compare and contrast different function families. This helps students make sense of algebra.
• Introduce the many ways to represent algebraic ideas, make connections among them, and make decisions about their uses. Focusing on multiple representations and building representational fluency builds students’ understanding of algebra.
• Engage students in exploring the power of algebra to investigate real-world issues and develop possible solutions.
• Model correct algebraic language, connecting ideas through words, and avoid imprecise terms. This helps students participate in mathematical discourse.
• Discuss the history of algebraic ideas, stories about important mathematicians, and the contributions of female and non-European practitioners. This sparks students’ interest in and understanding of algebra.
• Be frank about algebra’s historical role stratifying students in schools and its gatekeeper role for post-secondary opportunities. “I wish I had viewed algebra teaching and learning through a more-critical lens,” says Newton, “and asked more questions about who benefited and who was disadvantaged by school policies related to algebra.” 

“10 Things I Wish I Had Known About Teaching Algebra” by Jill Newton in Mathematics Teacher, September 2026 (Vol. 119, #9, pp. 742-747); Newton is at janewton@purdue.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1155 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Co-Constructing "Thinking Notes" in Building Thinking Classrooms

            In this article in Mathematics Teacher, Texas math educators Priya Pierre-Louis, Laura Godard, and Margaret Pearce describe Thinking Notes as an adaptation to Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms process. Here’s what led to the idea.

            In the middle of a BTC class, with students working standing up in groups of three solving a challenging calculus problem at erasable whiteboards, the teacher noticed an error being made by all the groups. Getting the attention of the class, the teacher provided an explanation that got students back on track.

            But the teacher (and colleagues in similar situations) noticed that some students “felt uneasy moving on without a detailed, teacher-guided, written synthesis,” say Pierre-Louis, Godard, and Pearce. “They valued collaborative discovery but wanted reassurance from the teacher about the precision of their understanding.”

            That’s what sparked the idea of Thinking Notes. “Instead of providing prewritten notes,” say the authors, “we co-create summaries with the class after problem-solving sessions. These notes are not ‘examples and answers’ but rather artifacts of our collective reasoning” – including graphs and diagrams, insights, generalizations, and examples and non-examples that surfaced during the all-class discussion.

            The Thinking Notes are captured in the class’s digital notebook, say the authors, forming “a bridge between the spontaneity of thinking tasks and the students’ desire for precise records for future reference.” At each of these “pause points” in a lesson, “students independently decide whether to record notes in their notebooks, often adding to the student-created notes they have already written during group work.”

            The Thinking Notes provide “a shared, vetted synthesis that students can draw on as their understanding continues to develop,” say Pierre-Louis, Godard, and Pearce. “While still grounded in student language and reasoning, Thinking Notes benefit from teacher facilitation and tend to be more conceptually coherent, mathematically precise, and reusable as reference for future tasks, assessments, and revision.”

            The authors report that this adaptation of Building Thinking Classrooms has resulted in students being more confident with subsequent tasks: “For some students, the obstacle was not a lack of ideas but uncertainty about whether their thinking was ‘correct’ enough to share publicly. The Thinking Notes phase reduced this risk by positioning ideas as provisional and open to refinement. As a result, several students who were hesitant to speak during group work began volunteering contributions during notes creation, knowing their ideas would be examined and revised collectively, rather than evaluated individually.” Quieter students contributed more at the whiteboards and in all-class discussions.

            Thinking Notes, conclude Pierre-Louis, Godard, and Pearce, “have had a profound impact on our classroom culture. Students report feeling empowered because they are the authors of the mathematical ideas recorded: their language, reasoning, and representations shape the notes. At the same time, students experience a sense of security through teacher facilitation as their collective thinking is affirmed, refined, and validated for mathematical accuracy. This combination allows students to take intellectual risks during exploration while trusting that misconceptions will be surfaced and addressed during synthesis. This process has helped us, as teachers, slow down and honor moments of deep reasoning before moving to the next task.” 

“Thinking Notes: Co-Constructed Reflection” by Priya Pierre-Louis, Laura Godard, and Margaret Pearce in Mathematics Teacher, September 2026 (Vol. 119, #9, pp. 748-751); Pierre-Louis can be reached at pierrelouis@gmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1155 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

What Do Students Want in History and Civics Classroom Discussions?

            Running a good classroom discussion is “challenging work,” say Andrew Schiera (University of Colorado/Boulder) and Andrew del Calvo (Rutgers University) in this article in Social Education, especially on controversial topics. They share suggestions from a diverse group of high-school students on how social studies teachers can make discussions lively, engaging, and safe: 

• A big question – The focus of discussion needs to be open-ended, students said, not pointed toward a single correct answer or a binary agree/disagree choice. Students liked being asked to formulate an initial opinion and then modify it in light of evidence and contrary opinions. In short, say Schiera and del Calvo, students appreciated “an authentic, shared problem space so that they could inquire deeply, individually, and collectively.”
• Facilitation – Students wanted teachers to provoke discussion with questions and follow-up comments that sparked deeper thinking. They also appreciated teachers clarifying when things got confusing and refocusing when students were straying from the topic or “going back and forth on the same stuff.”
• Multiple perspectives – Students said they wanted to hear all sides of historical and civics debates, perhaps engaging in small-group discussions to elicit and understand different points of view. But students cautioned against “both-sides-ism” and hoped that clear moral choices could emerge from discussions.
• Participation – Students had seen too many discussions involving “mostly just like three people,” and asked teachers to ensure broad and equitable participation, including: having students sit in a circle; establishing and monitoring air-time norms; inviting new voices; cold-calling; using thumb polls; and assigning participation grades. At the same time, students recognized that there were times when an intense dialogue should be allowed to continue, not cutting it off and letting others take the discussion off track. 
• The teacher’s role – Students suggested that teachers go beyond mere facilitation, encouraging them to chime in as co-inquirers – without dominating the discussion or conveying that their opinion was correct. Students were aware that a teacher being too opinionated or seeming to push a political agenda could spark parental outrage. 
• Psychological safety – Students mentioned several ways to ensure that discussions felt emotionally comfortable while being intellectually open: setting norms about respectful engagement; thoughtfully introducing difficult topics; reassuring students about fear of saying something “wrong;” allowing students time to think; not trying to orchestrate a single conclusion; not interrupting and shutting students down; and using small-group turn-and-talk when appropriate.
• Connecting past, present, and lived experience – Students appreciated delving into primary-source material but wanted historical events to be connected to the present day and their own lived experience. “Overall,” say Schiera and del Calvo, “students wanted discussions that connected historical inquiry to contemporary life while providing enough structure to help them navigate those connections in meaningful ways.” 

“‘Setting the Conversation on Fire’: What Youth Want from Social Studies Conversations” by Andrew Schiera and Andrew del Calvo in Social Education, September 2026 (Vol. 90, #4, pp. 216-220); the authors are at AJ.Schiera@colorado.edu and andrew.delcalvo@gse.rutgers.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1151 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

A Low-Floor/High-Ceiling Math Problem for Multiple Grade Levels

            In this Mathematics Teacher article, Stephen Caviness (University of Virginia) shares what he calls a quintessential low-floor/high-ceiling math task – one that is accessible to every student and has multiple, creative solutions to explore. “Such tasks,” he says, “support students in embracing uncertainty, engaging in productive struggle, and expressing creativity in doing mathematics.”

            He’s had success using this task – Close to 1,000 – with students from second grade to college level: 

 Using the digits 1 to 9 exactly once each, place a digit in each box to make the sum as close to 1,000 as possible. 

Caviness encourages students to start filling the boxes without a strategy to see what happens – perhaps 123 + 456 + 789. Common mistakes are using a digit more than once and using zero, which is not an option. “From here,” he says, “students will have to think about place value as they make small iterations, narrowing in on sums closer and closer to 1,000. Ultimately, the closest that one can get to 1,000 is 999, but there are many ways to get there.” 

            As students find correct answers, Caviness suggests a number of ways the task can be extended to get students thinking about the math in deeper ways:

• Why do we regroup? What does it mean to “carry the one”?
• Which sum is furthest from 1,000? What would be the “wrongest” answer?
• What if you were allowed to use a zero?
• Are there any values as close to 1,000 as 999?
• Why can’t we add to 1,001?
• What patterns do you notice about our closest solutions?
• How many ways are there to add to 999? (There are 180.) 

“Close to 1,000” by Stephen Caviness in Mathematics Teacher, July 2026 (Vol. 119, #7, pp. 520-523); Caviness can be reached at slc9th@virginia.edu. For an extensive collection of non-routine math problems, see Stella’s Stunners, compiled and organized by Ohio teacher Rudd Crawford.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1148 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

How a Children's Book Can Build Empathy and Understanding

            In this Council Chronicle article, teacher/author Priten Soundar-Shah says she reads the same children’s picturebook, Fish Is Fish by Leo Lionni, to every class she teaches – middle school, summer camp, college, adult learners. She reads the book with sing-song expression, holding up the illustrations page by page. “Some people look at me like I’ve completely lost my mind,” she says. “But some are intrigued. They want to know where I’m going with this.” 

            Here’s the book’s story. A minnow and tadpole become best friends. The tadpole grows into a frog and leaves the pond to explore the world. When he returns, he tells the minnow about the amazing things he’s seen – birds, cows, people. But his friend can only imagine these unknown things as fish-shaped versions. Birds are fish with wings, cows are fish with udders, people are fish walking upright. “The fish’s imagination is constrained entirely by what it already knows,” says Soundar-Shah. “It imagines these things, but it’s limited by its own experiences. So, it imagines things that are slightly incorrect.”

            The frog’s perception is also distorted. “He’s excited,” says Soundar-Shah. “He genuinely wants to communicate. And yet, because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, because he has his own lived experiences that he’s drawing from, he can’t even conceptualize what might not make sense to the fish. He doesn’t know what the gaps are.”

            This becomes a theme as Soundar-Shah and her students explore new material. “We’re going to read something,” she says. “Our intuition might be to immediately disagree. But remember, we might be fish in this scenario. We really want to listen carefully to make sure we’re understanding the whole context.” When students are inclined to think an idea is completely ridiculous, she asks, “Are we being the frog? Are we being the fish? Have we conveyed things as accurately and clearly as possible to someone who doesn’t have our lived experiences?”

            Fish Is Fish becomes a way to approach difficult conversations. “It’s a reminder that understanding across difference requires both humility about what we might be missing and generosity toward what others are trying to communicate,” says Soundar-Shah. “In a moment when so many of us are struggling with how to hold space for genuine dialogue in our classrooms, a five-minute children’s book might be exactly the kind of disarming, humble starting point we need.” 

 “Why I Teach the Same Picturebook to Every Class I Teach” by Priten Soundar-Shah in Council Chronicle, Spring 2026 (Vol. 35, #3, pp. 27-28)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1148 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.