Forsyth Elementary Teacher Pens Book for Kids on Bullying

As a teacher for the past 10 years, Nadia Porcelli-Munisteri has seen bullying firsthand. So the Whitlow Elementary School second grade teacher wrote a book for children in K-2.

She's seen kids just being kids who are immediately labeled as bullies, and wants children to understand what bullying is so they know when to seek help.

"It's at their level, so that they can clearly comprehend what a real definition of bullying is,' she said.

The book includes examples of what children face daily at school. Just being pushed at school doesn't mean a child has been bullied. But repeated, aggressive behavior is bullying. The book strives to teach the difference.

She has written the book so the main character is having a conversation with the person who is reading it.

Who Are You Calling A Bully?
By Nadia Porcelli-Munisteri
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Bullying
Published: Mar 08, 2013
8 x 10 color paperback
ISBN: 9781478717034
$14.95 available on Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble

She was motivated to write the book after having so much experience with bullying. Porcelli-Munisteri has been teaching for 10 years, with four of those in New York and the rest here in Georgia, always teaching Kindergarten through third grade. She teaches second grade in Forsyth County. That teaching experience has come with a lot of different types of children and types of schools, from lower to upper income.

"And I've always experienced bullying," she said.

At her present school she's been on the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program committee to design lesson plans for lower grades to help her, parents and children understand what bullying is.

"I have to start them out at a very young age," she said.

If parents read the book to their children, they'll get a bit of an education as well.

"It's just a horrible thing all of the stories you hear, children committing suicide over it," Porcelli-Munisteri said.

She started putting her ideas down in a manuscript. Knowing that it would take a long time to try to get a publisher to print her book, she instead chose the self-publishing route.

"I knew big companies would turn me down for years," she said.

The one publisher she sent her manuscript were overwhelmed with submissions. They told her to wait another year. So she found Outskirts Press to help get it published. It still took about a year to get the book in final form, with Outskirts finding an editor and an illustrator for her. After work on all of their parts, she finally got the finished book back about a month ago.

"I felt pretty good about it considering it was a topic I felt passionate about, she said.

The finished book she thinks is a great way for parents and teachers to help show kids what bullying is, but in a fun way while teaching a lesson. Giving a definition to bullying is a great start to ready children for the programs about bullying done in school, she said.

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