AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR Marvale Primary School. A cloudy autumn sky. The day started with three hundred and sixty students and seventeen teachers. It ended with three people missing. Lisa and Jacob Johnstone had suffered a well-documented childhood of neglect and abuse. Everyone agreed that it needed to end. Jessica Bell was a kind and well-respected teacher. A strong and motivated woman, she only wanted the best for her students. Her own history of damage and pain had her believing that running away was the solution they had all been searching for. And so ensued a battle between right and wrong, good and evil, and common sense and the law. Miss Bell was not a bad woman. She was a good teacher. This is her story.
AUTHOR: PJ is a primary school teacher who lives in the beachside suburb of Quinns Rocks, Western Australia. He has always loved searching for the truth in every facet of life. ‘It has a million disguises and can be many things to different people.’ As an author, PJ sees Truth as the ultimate muse, and The Good Teacher is a perfect example of this. The book’s characters are on on a journey together, searching for their own true paths. Searching for what is right! PJ spent six years working on ‘The Good Teacher’ before achieving publication and agrees that whilst it was a very long and winding road, getting to the summit has proved far more rewarding than he could ever have imagined. Like many teachers before him, writing became not only a part-time obsession, but the ignition for PJ’s debut novel. His work as a teacher saw him exposed to the musings of his fellow teachers, with their stories of that one student they wished they could have saved. And so, PJ set about exploring that idea, this heartfelt notion; that what if, after trying every conceivable avenue and coming to a dead end, the only option was to take matters into your own hands, sacrificing your own life and career for someone else’s child? And so began the hero’s journey of ‘The Good Teacher’.