In a master's course for secondary literacy teachers, productive tensions arose when the author asked the graduate student educators to engage in remix and restory of a canonical text through an assignment. Teachers primarily expressed concerns about access to digital tools and oriented toward the assignment in relation to modalities and interaction rather than critical analysis of canonicity or consideration of tools used. The subsequent case study centered analysis of one teacher, Katerina, and how she took up the remix and restory assignment and experienced tensions around creation, criticality, and access with texts and tools. The researcher/course instructor turned toward these tensions as a practitioner inquiry into the ways teacher educators can reframe problematic notions of classroom teachers "schoolifying" participatory practices, instead drawing on tensions as a means of surfacing orientations that shape assignment and course design. From analyzing and reflecting on this teacher's restory project, the author argues for extended design-based engagement with canonicity with educators and facilitating a platform orientation toward tools.