Everything is a Remix (2023): Teaching and the Art of Borrowing
Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix argues that true originality is a myth – everything we create is built from borrowing, transforming, and combining what we’ve experienced before. Ferguson’s focus on music, movies, and games instantly brought me back to one of my favorite mashups from 2009: DJ Earworm’s iconic “United State of Pop.” Hearing it again was a wave of nostalgia – does anyone else remember this song?
But this idea goes far beyond music. Remixing is at the heart of teaching, too!
Teaching as a Remix
Just like musicians sample and mix tracks to create something fresh, educators build lessons by drawing on ideas, strategies, and resources from colleagues, textbooks, and online sources. We see something inspiring and think, “That’s brilliant – I can use that!” But, teaching isn’t just about copying what we find beneficial for students, it’s about remixing it in a way that we feel works best. A great teacher, like a skilled remixer, doesn’t simply copy. They curate, layer, and transform ideas into something meaningful and engaging. Additionally, each class is different, and effective teaching means reshaping and recontextualizing material to meet the needs of a particular group of students.
Personally, every lesson I create is a remix of strategies and resources I’ve gathered over time. With each semester, I tweak, refine, and rework my lessons to make them even better. And honestly? I love this process. Remixing keeps teaching fresh, creative, and responsive to students’ needs. Recently, I have been trying to incorporate more “Think, Pair, Shares” into my classroom and have found ChatGPT beneficial for getting ideas on how to get the students engaged in interesting discussions!
How do you remix your teaching?!
Ohhhhh I love a good mash-up! This was a fun listen while typing my response. I agree wholeheartedly that teaching is a remix. After 15 years of teaching, even when I teach the same thing, I never actually teach the same thing. Everything is a remix, transformed accordingly for this unique group of students and their needs. To answer your question more specifically, I’ll focus on some ways I use remixing in my middle-year ELA classes. We use sketchnoting so students can take traditional ideas/concepts and transform them into their own interpretations. Traditional oral stories are turned into podcasts and shadow puppet productions. Pop culture is also a key focus, using action heroes as character archetypes and rewriting video game plot structures. I don’t see how we can get away from remixing if we want to stay relevant in our lessons. I also don’t understand the mentality of hoarding resources and ideas. Ours is a profession intended for sharing.
Thanks for including the ways you “remix”, specifically to keep your lessons relevant. Your ideas sound fun and I am sure are engaging and impactful for your students!