PEORIA, Ill. — Elementary music teacher Tyler Bishop turned his students’ disruptive “six-seven” chant into an original holiday singalong at Northmoor Primary School as winter break approached. He wrote and produced “Six–Seven Christmas” after the chant started hijacking beat-counting practice, then used music-production software with artificial intelligence features to polish a pop-style track, he told Education Week, Dec. 29, 2025.
It’s a familiar teacher dilemma, packaged in a very 2025 wrapper: when a viral sound lands in the hallway, it usually finds its way into the classroom. For Bishop, the 6-7 Christmas moment wasn’t about banning the phrase — it was about taking control of it.
6-7 Christmas: when a meme meets music class
The “six seven” trend has been hard to pin down precisely because it doesn’t always mean anything specific. As People reported, it spread from the repeated lyric in Skrilla’s “Doot Doot (6 7)” and surged through short-form videos, including edits linked to NBA star LaMelo Ball’s 6-foot-7 height. NPR Illinois reported the phrase’s rise was big enough that Dictionary.com named “67” its 2025 word of the year — a sign of how quickly internet slang can jump from phones to school corridors.
How Bishop built the remix
Bishop’s solution was to give the chant a melody and a job. He recorded himself singing, then used a digital audio workstation to add a studio-style vocal and digital instruments. “Everything is still me,” he told Education Week, describing how he handled the writing, arranging and production while using modern tools to bring the track to a finished sound.
Why it’s working (at least for now)
For students, the song doesn’t demand they stop saying the phrase they already love. It asks them to say it in time, in tune and with purpose — turning a hallway call into a classroom routine. That’s the heart of the 6-7 Christmas approach: the kids’ culture stays recognizable, but it gets redirected toward skills like steady beat, counting patterns and basic rhythm.
The idea has deep roots. A 2023 WBUR segment revisiting “Schoolhouse Rock” traced how catchy hooks helped generations remember civics and multiplication. And in 2016, Time chronicled a teacher rewriting pop hits to set classroom rules — proof that educators have been “remixing” student attention spans long before today’s viral audio loops.
Whether the 6-7 Christmas moment lasts beyond winter break is an open question. But the playbook is portable: when the next chant arrives, teach it back with a chorus — and make the 6-7 Christmas strategy part of the repertoire.
