Using The Revealers as the center
of a "Bully Out!" study unit

Middle school language arts teacher Karon Perron, of the Castleton Village School in Castleton, Vermont, started her six-week "Bully Out!" study unit, which would center on The Revealers, by asking two of her own, older children at home for every nasty word they could remember hearing used to describe someone in middle school.

"I took the raunchy ones out—and the others I recited, almost like a poem," Karon says.

Her school had ordered a set of 30 copies of The Revealers. The books had arrived and students had seen the back cover, with an overweight boy's listing of the names he had been called. They were intrigued.

"The kids said, 'When are we going to read it?'" she recalls. "I had to insist that no one jump the gun, and that the ones who had already read the book not tell anyone about it."

Then the day came to start. Karon was ready with her list.

"They came in, sat down, and I started saying, in a loud voice, all these different names." That riveted Perron's students, and began a unit that was, she says, the most successful she has ever done in a language arts class.

The teacher read The Revealers out loud; students could volunteer to read chapters to the class, and could also sign out copies to read on their own. Ongoing discussion of the book was blended with three video viewings—of a Dr. Phil program on bullying and the movies "Remember the Titans" and "Shrek"—and with homework challenges that, in part, the students helped to design.

As the "Bully Out!" study unit plan stipulates, Karon asked her students to comb media sources and bring in at least one article that they felt portrayed bullying or harassment of some kind. They had studied positive, negative, and neutralizing expressions in language. They looked for the negative.

And they discussed the novel as it unfolded in the class reading.

"They had the most discussions they've ever had," Karon says. "They really wanted to talk: 'When this happened in the book, it reminded me of ...' My kids felt close to the characters. It was almost like they were real people."

With such a touchy subject matter, key to the fruitfulness of the class discussions was building trust across the class.

"There were certain things that helped build that trust," the teacher says. "The whole experience of reading the book—they trusted each other through that. I would ask them, 'What really struck you in the reading?' I shared some of my own, personal stories from growing up. And I think they just knew that they were safe in the classroom. When one person shared things, everyone else in the classroom supported them."

The unit marked the first time that, in many years of teaching, Karon saw every single student complete every homework assignment. Students who were out sick called friends to make sure they knew what tasks were expected. Every student completed a final project, a number of which were self-designed—and even after school ended, several of Karon's students let her know they would be rereading the book on their own over the summer. About ten of them volunteered to each record the book on tape, for the school library. For more on the unit and the students' response, see Karon's testimonial letter.

"The Revealers really stood out to me," says one of Mrs. Perron's students, April Springer. "It has changed a few people. Some people don't realize how much it hurts to bully.

"Bullying isn't cool," she adds. "But The Revealers is."