Book Recomendation For Teachers:

A Piece of Cake was an amazing read that I think all teachers in urban schools should definitely take a look at.

If you have students in foster home arrangements, you should read this book.

If you are suspicious of students being sexually or physically abused, you should read this book.

If you have students who experiments with drugs, you should read this book.

If you have students who engage in gang activity, you should read this book.

If you couldn't put down A Child Called It, you should definitely read this book.

A Piece of Cake is a memoir…a story that happened to a real person, Cupcake Brown…and this tale follows a young black girl from the death of her mother, to the abuse and rape in foster care, through the neglect of social services through the foster program…and observes a young woman making all the wrong choices: drug use, prostitution, and the joining of the Crip gang. While all illegal actions aren’t celebrated, they are explored with honesty…allowing readers inside the mind of an abused child reaching womanhood and seeing her gangster homies as a safe-place, and her drugs as an escape.

This book really made me think about my students, and could have been written about them. I have teenage students who are in and out of foster homes, sometimes on the streets. M, my 17 year old father of a 3 month old baby gets high almost every day. And if I get inside his head, I can see why. All the pressure of fatherhood and the growing sense that he’s headed for an IEP diploma, so why give a shit? Is evident.

And isn’t the truth that once we understand and can isolate what holds our students back, isn’t that when we can help them persevere?