Behind the Textbook: Seven Layer Dip

[barclay_barrios]

My experience as a teacher has taught me that figuring out what will and will not work in the classroom can sometimes be a crapshoot. I’ve had assignments that I thought were going to be brilliant homeruns only to see them crash and burn. And I’ve also had readings I wasn’t sure students would get, only to see them do amazing things with them. The issue of what works is more complicated when building a textbook. If something’s a flop, it can’t just be swapped out next semester. No, what makes it in the book stays there for at least three years. Yikes! That’s why I use the “seven-layer dip” method. Every reading for Emerging goes through seven different reviews:

1. Me: First, I take a look at the selection. Does it have potential? Is it interesting? At this point I’m usually just skimming it to get a quick feel for it.
2. A teacher in our program: Second, I hand the reading off to someone teaching in our writing program. That second set of eyes offers a useful perspective, especially since that teacher’s classroom isn’t mine.
3. Me: Then it comes back to me. On the second pass, I take a careful look at it, imagining the kinds of ideas students generate and the kinds of assignments we might write.
4. John: My editor is next in line. He brings an important perspective—one much broader than my own or those of the teachers in our program. He has a sense of other programs and other ways of teaching that I just don’t have access to.
5. A teacher in our program: Then the selection goes back to one of the teachers in our program, only this time it goes into the classroom. By this point, we have a pretty good sense of how it will work, but there’s only one way to know for sure.
6. Students: Testing a reading in the classroom is vital. If students can’t work with a reading—if it’s too difficult, too flimsy, too boring—then there’s no sense in keeping it.
7. Me and John: As a final step, John and I work together to figure out which of the selections that have made it this far should end up in the textbook. That’s another process, which I will discuss in the next post.