Gurupreet K. Khalsa
USA
Gurupreet K.
Khalsa is a Founding Teacher of Odyssey Charter School in
Altadena, California. She has been teaching for more than 20
years, and is currently the Language Arts and History
teacher for the 6th-8th grade instructional team.
Gurupreet's greatest excitement comes from assisting
students in discovering knowledge and concepts that help
them to grow as human beings. When young people become
lifelong readers and learners, examining how their lives
interact with the world around them, she feels that her job
as a teacher has been accomplished.
She strongly believes that literature, poetry, and history
can provide intellectual foundations for students to create
their own views of the world and that competent language and
writing skills can help them to express these views in the
most effective way. Responsibility and a commitment to
excellence are some of her major goals for students.
Gurupreet is a National Board Certified Teacher and is
actively involved with the California Writing Project. She
earned her Bachelors Degree in English (with a History
minor) and Professional Clear Single Subject Teaching
Credential in English from the University of Montevallo,
Alabama. She completed her Masters Degree in Education at
Cal State University, Los Angeles.
Gurupreet is married and has two adult daughters.
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Two Johns
In
the Church of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, adjacent to
the John F. Kennedy School of Government, 7/30/03
An old Asian priest enters and locks.
Somber, quiet, air still.
Traffic on the street outside might be wind or sea.I am looking for
a place of power, a focus to
the Infinite, a prism to change
all colors into white.
I am prepared to be humbled by hundreds
of years of worshipping feet in this space.
This church is dark, gray, shadowed.
Here is history, solidity, tradition -
but tame reverence,
shadows of banners.
Rituals of church
no more or less
than rituals of government
Rotunda and arches
embrace no thing palpable.
The priest passes on through, no glance for me,
the searcher.
The fan is too far above, fifty feet removed -
too far to
stir the air or move the light
Waiting for Mother’s Death
I wait for the night wind
to softly ease the sadness,
to take it and scatter it
among the leaves of the forest.
The wind separates the gloom into particles,
disperses, dismantles,
reconnects in a different space.
I become particulate, yielding
to coolness, separation.
Wafting in myriad directions,
borne on the night breeze, trusting
to become new,
being in the arms of the wind, not knowing
where I would land.
Copyright, Gurupreet K. Khalsa.
All rights reserved by author.
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