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About the Author

John Gust has been an educator, writer, and seminar leader for nearly two decades. John has taught everything from first-grade to graduate level courses in the teacher education departments at several universities. He has also been an educational consultant specializing in teacher trainings, curriculum design and event promotions. John is a Fellow of the UCLA Writing Project and a member of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE).

John has published a total of seven teacher resource books on topics such as self-esteem enhancement, character development, systems thinking, communication skills and multicultural education. His most recent work is titled Adventures in Fantasy: Lessons and Activities in Descriptive and Narrative Writing (Jossey-Bass). John's first attempt at storytelling was a piece of narrative nonfiction titled Round Peg, Square Hole: A Teacher Lives and Learns in Watts (Heinemann). This book shares the story of the many challenges John and his students faced in and out of school in south-central Los Angeles.

Throughout John's career he has been an advocate of holistic education, critical pedagogy, transformative learning and ecological literacy. He has a special interest in narrative inquiry, action research and consciousness studies. As a fifth-grade teacher at South Shores Magnet for the Visual and Performing Arts in San Pedro, California, John is busy at work applying these philosophies and methodologies in his classroom. Currently, John is working on his first piece of fiction for young adults: The Taylor Thomas Trilogy. This adventure fantasy is as much a result of John's classroom writing instruction, as it is inspired from a transformative dream and several meaningful synchronistic events that followed.