"Beating Bullying at Home and In Your Community: The LGBTQ+ Guide to Beating Bullying" By Clara MacCarald

 Beating Bullying at Home and In Your Community: The LGBTQ+ Guide to Beating Bullying By Clara MacCarald

Originally Published in 2018

Summary: The title of this book summarizes the content well. This is a short read novel (approximately 54 pages long) that anyone can read to discover where bullying happens and how to help/prevent bullying for people in the LGBTQ+ Community. It describes how families, communities, as well as social media are all mediums where bullying occurs and affects peoples lives and how people can address bullying in general. 

This novel would be a great introduction for any secondary students. Because of the shortness of length, and the straightforward content, any student should be able to read this and gather the intended messaging and information. In addition to the shortness of length it provides a series of powerful images that any secondary student would be able to recognize and take meaning from. 

Teaching Considerations: 

This novel is one that I feel would be a perfect novel to cover in a week/ few days class period. In many schools they have bullying awareness/ bullying prevention assemblies and/or teachings around bullying. I think this novel would be a great addition to these small session/mini units and would bring tremendous value to those teachings and introduce a lot of concepts that many students may not be aware of. The first thing that this book brings up is how bullying affects LGBTQ+ people at home. 

A close read that teachers should have students examine is on page 13. It describes the scenarios in which parents can be bullys." 33% of families were not accepting .... parents may make negative comments whenever they see someone who is LGBTQ+... They may try to control an LGBTQ+ teen, thinking they can make their offspring straight..." (p. 13) This is just one example of how the novel addresses bullying that can occur at home. This passage is important for teachers to share with students because it exposes a reality that many teens may not know is happening. For teens that are experiencings bullying at home it can be an immensely powerful tool for recognition. Considering the Power and position families have in youths lives a student that experiences bullyin may not recognize what is happening or may begin to internalize the bullying that happens to them. Looking at this novel may be the small addition to an LGBTQ+ teens life that helps them to find acceptance especially within a family dynamic that they may or may not know is hurting them. 

This novel would also be a great addition to a unit around identity. It could be used as a supplementary text to help students recognize and understand what is happening not only in their own lives but in the lives of the characters they see in novels. One example of how this text could be used is in addition to the text The Dangerous Art of Blending In by Angelo Surmelis. The Dangerous Art of Blending in follows the story of a young LGBTQ+ Teen that has abusive parents. In short, How to beat bullying can be used in supplementation to this novel to help students understand the perspectives of the main character as well as extend their thinking about how to address these situations moving forward. 

A final passage that would be good for students to look at is on Page 39 in the section title Getting the Message out. Having students read this passage would be transformational because it could help students see the greater picture of how what they learn in school transfers to the outside world. Even the first sentence can have a profound impact on student thinking. MacCarald notes "Schools often run antibullying campaigns but so do community organizations" Having students read through this passage could help them to understand that all the things we do in class have applications outside of school too. This could easily extend in to a research study to find different organizations and maybe how we can help them or how they can help schools to build up their own campaigns. A teaching move that could be good here is creating a presentation about a specific outside program that a school could lean on. It would teach students to be advocates for themselves and in their communities. 

This is a short, to the point book that would be a great addition to any school antibullying campaign, any identity unit, and just overall great information learning to examine. There are some themes that may be difficult for some students including abuse, cyberbullying, etc. so it is important to preface these before having students embark into this novel. 

Mentioned before a great text to consider if you like this one is The Dangerous Art of Blending In by Angelo Surmelis. It is a novel that would pair very well with this one to provide an example of some of the concepts that are explained in this novel.