What Happens Next: Celebrating Stories with Children

by Michael Dennis Cassity

In ten personal narrative essays, Mr. Cassity brings humor and soul to the literary world of his classroom, spanning nearly forty years of his teaching. The author focuses on many works of literature he has introduced to his students, elementary through college, and shares with his readers the surprising and unexpected responses he encountered. Mr. Cassity shunned the use of basal texts and worksheets, using instead trade publications, novels, short stories, drama, and poetry--centered around daily writing, dialogue, and integrated reading activities. The result is a continuing classroom drama of student voices, of a teacher struggling along hilariously with his learners, of a visual history of students mapping out their own growing literary landscapes. This book is for the general reader and the educational professional alike; the world Mr. Cassity describes is a milieu that transcends the school or college, helping us to discover how our culture is moved inevitably by the power of stories.

172 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 2, 2013

Reviews

[Richard Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about teaching and learning and about literature, read and lived. Michael Cassity spent about forty years teaching students, from grade three (as I recall) to college level. It appears that much of his teaching was whole class and most of it was with books that range from long-standing classics like The Odyssey to more modern classics like The Wind in the Willows and Where the Wild Things are. What comes through time and time again is the power of a great story -- to attract the attention of students and to engage them in an exploration of life. Who knows if these books will help them get better test scores, but by reading his descriptions of the teacher, the story, and the kids we can not help but conclude that Cassity's choices of books and his approach to teaching has a life-long impact on students. This book is a great read in its own right, and it makes a strong statement about what we are losing as our society continues to move toward a reliance on testing as the measure of students, teachers, and schools.