What I Mean When I say "Academic DJ"
Always be sampling
“A collection starts as a protest against the passage of time and ends as a celebration of it. My collection sprang up like seeds in a flower bed, and I can only guess at the first seeds based on the flowers I see now.”—Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson
1. Why this, why now?
When I first encountered the above quote from Questlove, in a NYT Opinion piece in 2022, it resonated with me in a way that I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. Perhaps I am beginning to articulate that feeling now.
I am no Questlove and my subject matter cannot begin to approach the coolness of his. But like him, I too see—indeed experience—collecting and curating as an act of devotion, creativity, and at times, of love. I have always hoarded information. Subconsciously I often think this is why I studied and taught history. To collect, curate, and to share stories and information about the past is to engage in a kind of time travel. You wield power in multiple dimensions. Not the kind or extent of power many in today’s political landscape might believe, but a power nonetheless.
Lately, my work and interests have drawn me further away from History and the classroom. While I still dabble in that space, I am not nearly the history teacher I once was. Yet I still approach the work, now oriented more towards general conceptions of teaching and learning, pedagogy, and curriculum, with the same spirt of curation. Hence the blog’s title, The Academic DJ. Like Questlove, I too have a collection of things from which I frequently sample—always seeking to make something anew, to share with a public audience, and to bring folks into a wider community of learners. Questlove deploys endless shelves and crates of vinyl records to do so. My tools live in places like Zotero, in Notion, in Google Keep, and the vast array of digital ephemera compiled after nearly two decades in education.
These seeds have germinated long enough. May we begin to see the flowers.
2. What kind of community are you looking to build here
I have built a community, and in some ways a career, thanks to my active participation on Twitter for the last dozen years. Increasingly a space more akin to a dark alley than a bastion of information and light, I’ve started this Substack with the hope of replicating the best parts of what I experienced there. The focus of this space will be primarily academic—that is to say the majority of posts will emphasize some aspect of teaching and learning, pedagogy, and curriculum. The recent advent of generative AI technologies in the classroom has also piqued my interest of late. I have to imagine I’ll spend lots of time thinking and sharing resources in this realm as well.
But I’m also dad to three boys (Benno, 8 Matteo, 6, and Enzo 3) so I’ll inevitably delve into parenting stuff and aspects of child development. So too have I been a coach (hockey mostly, but plenty of other sports too) for over two decades. Like my Twitter feed, my Substack will likely be large, and it will contain multitudes. If you’re interested in any of things, I simply ask that you read and share as so moved.
Have thoughts or feedback? I welcome them also.
3. Great, now what?
As a means of holding myself capable, I am writing here to promise two posts a week. A recent shift in professional responsibilities has afforded me the opportunity to do more thinking—and in turn, to do more writing. So too is this Substack a personal act of resistance against the advent of AI in much of what we do and will likely do in the future. As someone (mostly) pragmatically optimistic about AI in education, I still feel it critical to find and to maintain my own voice.
I will certainly outsource certain forms of writing in my personal and professional life to various AI platforms, but not the The Academic DJ; this one is mine. As L.M. Sacasas recently wrote in his own beautiful Substack post, “Let the machine have everything that is stamped with its spirit. Let us keep everything else.”
