Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember (Harvest Original)
by By Tisserand, Michael
Category: Nature , Natural Disasters

Sugarcane Academy: Building a School After Katrina tells the story of one adventurous teacher and his one-room schoolhouse. Circling around Mr. Reynaud's educational oasis are parents coping with losing their homes and trying to plan new futures, while learning to live on food stamps and FEMA assistance checks. It's a story of an unexpected journey to Cajun country for a classroom of children who are among the youngest victims of a national disaster.Sugarcane Academy also tells the stories of other evacuee children who landed in the Lafayette area. A boy born of Ukranian parents who holed up in a New Orleans medical center for four days after the hurricane, telling his mother he couldn't stop thinking about death. An ad-hoc tutoring room set up in the Cajundome, one of the sports arenas-turned-massive shelters that line Interstate 10 from Baton Rouge through Texas. There, counselors are using art and play to help children who witnessed tragedies, who lost family members. Through memoir, essay and reporting, the book will also reveal how race and class issues factor in both education and a natural disaster. We are still understanding how Katrina tore into the lives of children. Sugarcane Academy will profile one remarkable teacher and a group of children as they persevere through the storm's aftermath. It will also show that, even under the most difficult of circumstances, you can still find moments of sweetness.