Tag / education

by Cila Warncke

On Reading Aloud to Older Students

Reading aloud is like breast feeding: everyone agrees it is vital for the very young, but past a certain age it gets side-eye.

There is ample research on how reading aloud supports early literacy (Wiseman, 2010; Lennox, 2013, etc.).

What about reading to older students though?

Should story-time, like nursing, be confined to the earliest stages of life, or should it continue beyond the point kids can autonomously digest texts?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

If primary function of reading aloud is to support literacy, research shows that reading to older learners “boosts their reading comprehension, increases their vocabularies, and helps them become better writers. In fact, students who are read to are more motivated to read themselves” (Blessing, 2005).

Zehr (2010) reported that, “teachers found by trial and error that reading aloud worked for adding interesting content or making literature come alive for students. And some educators say they read to their classes to model good reading, such as by asking comprehension questions as they go along.”

It is always gratifying when research supports my predilections, but I’ve been reading to older students — including adult learners — for as long as I’ve been teaching. Partly, it’s a failure of imagination: I loved being read to, cannot imagine anyone disliking it.

To be clear: my childhood pleasure in hearing books aloud had nothing to do with lack of independent reading skills. I could read by age four and would compete with myself to see how many pages I could read in a day. My record was 1,000. It was a 1,000 pages of the Paddington Bear series — not War and Peace — but the point is I read like a my life depended on it.

The pleasure of being read to was something else. Books I could (and did) read myself were still a joy to hear being read by my older sister, or one of my parents. We also tuned in to read-aloud radio programs, memorably The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Jeeves and Wooster.

***

What makes reading aloud so marvelous? And why should it be part of every literature and language teacher’s repertoire?

To get another perspective, I interviewed Andie Yellott, a lifetime English teacher, former Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Writing Program supervisor and parent of a child with dyslexia.

  1. Should reading aloud be continued beyond reading competence?
    Yes. Absolutely. When my son was in fourth grade, I would go in for one hour during lunchtime and read to his class. It was the highlight of the week, they told me. They loved it. They always wanted one more chapter.
  2. How did reading aloud support your son with dyslexia?
    He could not have gotten through school without me reading to him. I read everything, even the godawful high school health book. One of the advantages to reading aloud is you can stop and springboard off into other paths, other conversations, which you wouldn’t do if the kid was reading alone. And if you want a kid to do well on a standardized test, read, read, read.
  3. How did reading to your dyslexic son facilitate his communicative abilities?
    He’s got a huge vocabulary. I’d read to him, stop, ask what a word meant, try to figure it out contextually. Reading aloud to him made a difference. He thought he couldn’t write; now, he’s one of the best writers I know.

Like Yellott, I’ve had lots of student enthusiasm for reading aloud. It is more than just fun, though. Reading aloud supports specific skills, depending on whether the teacher or learner is reading aloud. Here are six benefits observed in my classrooms.

Photo by Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Teacher-led Reading

Improve pronunciation

Native and non-native speakers alike struggle with the whimsy of English pronunciation. In extreme cases, this can lead to students understanding spoken words but not being able to identify them in print, or vice versa. Reading aloud while students follow along in a text is a straightforward way to ensure that kids are matching the right groupings of letters to the sounds they hear. This is especially important for those who struggle with reading and/or are learning English as an additional language.

Build vocabulary

When students are reading independently it is difficult to gauge how well they comprehend individual words. Students may grasp the main idea of a text but miss important vocabulary. As Yellott said, reading aloud is an opportunity to identify and define unfamiliar words in context. While reading to my students, I pause frequently to check comprehension. If they don’t know a word, we search for context clues, then look up the definition to verify our deduction. This is also a great opportunity to reinforce knowledge of parts of speech, e.g. ‘this is the noun fly; what does it mean when we use it as a verb?’

Create community

Reading is too often solitary and functional, the vegetable kids have to eat before dessert. We need to remember: independently reading printed texts is a novelty. For most of homo sapiens‘ time on the planet, stories were oral. People gathered around fires, or beneath fearfully and wonderfully made cathedral ceilings, to listen to a bard/priest/storyteller. Being read to was the only way most people could experience books until the advent of mass public education, which wasn’t all that long ago.

Reading aloud in the classroom reclaims the power of the story to articulate fears, hopes and desires; to delve and reveal. Students who have a chance to respond verbally to a book: express how they feel, ask clarification questions and debate it with their peers, are axiomatically more engaged than those who skim it in lonely silence.

Learner-led Reading

Correct decoding errors

Even competent readers often make decoding errors such as ‘stared’ for ‘started’. If a student is reading silently, there is no chance to identify and correct these slips that, as they accumulate, affect comprehension. Younger and/or less able readers are more likely to make these mistakes, so reading aloud is an ideal tool to support their literacy.

Understand punctuation

If Emily Dickenson was right and “a word is dead./When it is said” then spare a thought for punctuation. Students can learn the function of commas, colons, etc. through direct instruction but that doesn’t automatically translate to competent — much less creative — usage in their writing. One of the best (only?) ways to understand the delicious possibilities of punctuation is to read aloud. By treating the punctuation as a kind of score — lift the voice here, pause, slow down, shout! — students develop the ear for punctuation that every good writer must have.

Improve verbal fluency and confidence

We tend to think of fluency in the context of learning an additional language, but it isn’t just language learners who need to practice this skill. Learning difficulties, lack of a richly verbal home life and shyness are a few of the reasons native speakers may struggle to express themselves fluently in their language. For students who struggle to articulate, whether because they are acquiring the language or for some other reason, reading aloud takes the pressure off of deciding what to say, and allows them to focus on how to say. Reading well-written texts gives students a chance to see how successful communication sounds; they can practice pronunciation, enunciation and tone without the risk of error. Ideally, they can inhabit the voice of the text and, in bringing it to life, experience the possibilities of their own voice.

Parting thought

In Sense and Sensibility the ‘sensible’ (i.e. sensitive) sister Marianne falls in love with Willoughby in part because “he read with all the sensibility and spirit” his rival lacked. In Jane Austen’s time, to read aloud well and fluently was a mark of refinement and good taste. As our world becomes more digitized, text-driven and fragmented, reading aloud is due a renaissance. Anyone can jab out a text; to read a book with eloquence and feeling, though? That’s magic.

How do you feel about reading aloud to older students? What benefits/challenges have you observed? Share in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

Advertisement
by Cila Warncke

Deprivation versus Education

Photo by Khalil on Unsplash

On Tuesday, around half-past-nine in the morning, my cat jumped onto the sink. An instant after I turned the tap, the power went out. Cue a three-day saga of landlord, electricians and plumbers clumping past my workspace and accusing glares from Teddy, the cat, as he nosed the unyielding tap.

Serendipitously, my three dry days coincided with reading from George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London with my students.

“It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty,” Orwell writes. “You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.”

Replace ‘poverty’ with ‘no running water’, ‘no electricity’, ‘no food’ or any other noun phrase related to a basic necessity. The principle stands.

To lack something one requires for survival is complicated, squalid, boring, low, crust-wiping. Whatever one’s other resources, the absence, scarcity or precarity of water, food, shelter, warmth, etc. is destructive.

Deprivation makes education harder to attain. Moreover, it robs whatever education one has acquired of its value.

Attention

In the elegiac opening sentence of ‘On Being Ill’ Virginia Woolf writes, “Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed… it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”

For when the lights of health go down, let’s substitute: when you can’t flush the toilet, or wash your hands.

My first unnerved thought, when I realized the water wasn’t returning at the flick of a fuse-switch, was, oh shit.

Literally. I have had severe IBS for over a decade. Proximity to a clean, functioning, private convenience is high on my list of essentials. Higher, in fact, than food. Food, once consumed, rapidly becomes a problem.

Not having water turned the next three days into a pathetic war of attrition with my internal organs, which I’d rather think of as friends than enemies. Boiled white rice became the meal of choice to minimize digestive demands.

Disarranged eating and hygiene stress combined to drag my mind away from classes. And I’m the teacher.

Imagine how much harder it is for students to cope with scarcity, and the fatal effect on attention.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Intention

Education helps us learn to make good choices. We learn to think critically, plan, weigh options, critique, etc. (ideally, anyway).

Orwell was well-educated and possessor of a rare mind. He argues, “a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs.”

Science bears out this observation: the brain is around 2% of body weight but hoovers up 20% of the body’s glucose-derived energy (Mergenthaler, et al., 2014). Depriving the body of the energy it requires disproportionately affects the brain; an effect for which the body attempts to compensate by purloining glucose from other vital systems. Nevertheless, subpar nutrition takes a crowbar to cognitive functions (Glucose and The Brain: Improving Mental Performance, 2013).

Other forms of deprivation, such as lack of running water, may not have the same immediate physiological implications, but they swiftly cripple good intentions.

Not knowing when the water would be back, I couldn’t plan dinner, much less anything in the more distant future. Clothes and dishes needed washing, cat bowls needed refilling, plants needed watering, but it couldn’t be done nor anticipated. I learned to live in the moment, in the worst possible way.

Interaction

Working from home, my attire tends more towards casual than smart. But there is a huge difference between informal and clean and plan dirty.

I take the ability to be clean, and therefore socially appropriate, for granted; fortunate am I.

Day one was tolerable but by day two the BO was bothering me. The morning of day three there were some unavoidable errands. After slathering on deodorant and shoving my grimy body into clean clothes I skulked out, coat zipped to the chin and masked. During the brief exchanges that followed, I stood as far away as courtesy allowed, marrow curling with self-consciousness.

I need to start donating to clean water projects, I thought. Then thought of all the people who live in places clean water projects don’t touch: places like Spain, the United States or the UK. In developed countries, broad access to running water, hygiene products, etc. masks — and no doubt exacerbates — the trauma of those who cannot access these fundamental resources.

Not being able to wash and groom adequately is uncomfortable on a personal level. I was hyperconscious of my bodily fluids and functions. But it is fatal to the ability to interact with clean human beings on an equal footing.

If I were a student who couldn’t wash, stuck in a roomful of freshly-scrubbed peers, I’d want to crawl under the floorboards. Or maybe I’d act out, to distract from my discomfort. I was fortunate to not have the precise experience as a kid, but I can imagine.

One thing is for sure: my mind would not be on my studies. I’d be counting the minutes till I could flee.

______________________________

Thursday night, the kitchen tap spluttered to life. Borderline delirious, I pulled on the Marigolds and scrubbed the dishes piled in the sink, wiped the counters, refilled the cat bowls. After a long, hot shower I put on clean pajamas, sat on the sofa and stared at the unlit furnace, unsure what to do.

The tiredness that gripped me wasn’t ordinary, end-of-the-week stuff. My energy and volition were sapped, like I’d run a marathon.

The argument of Mani, et al. (2013) that “poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity… because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks” made perfect sense.

Education is wonderful thing. There isn’t much I’d rather do than teach and learn. But deprivation is its undoing.

As a teacher, and an individual, I have a responsibility to work towards a more equitable society where people have the resources they need to benefit from education.

How can educators support a more equitable society? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

Education by Consent

Don’t wanna

He looked like the toddler offspring of Paul Simon and Crazy Frog: all exuberant curls and a rubber-band mouth stretched across his small face. It was at breaking point when I saw him, eyes clamped shut, Jagger lips flopped open in an unceasing howl. His tiny body, taut as a tug-of-war rope, pulled against his grandma’s hand.

My class, older by a few years moved into the classroom and settled into worksheets. The image of the tiny frog-face and its owner’s belly-roar of anguish distracted me from the grammar presentation.

What good is there in forcing a tiny, hysterical child into an ESL class, or any class? His brave, futile resistance was engendered by a dangerous notion: the tone-deaf, compassion-free insistence “education” was more important than his distress.

Agency

The little boy was experiencing education as an affront to his agency and personhood. He won’t understand those words for another decade or so but children, like all animals (human and otherwise) understand the difference between agency and imposition.

“So what?” you might ask. “Kids never want to go to school. You have to make them.”

If that is the case, instead of accepting it as a fact, we need to ask, why?

Children are curious to the point of being maddening, not to mention fearsome mimics. They will dog your steps demanding to know how things work, how to do things, imitating your words and actions until you’re half-afraid to move. They don’t hate learning. If they hate school it is a sign that education, as it is currently conceived, doesn’t serve them.

Coercion versus consent

Despite his protests, this little boy had “education” imposed on him by force majeure. 

Nobody, but nobody, likes to be coerced. Not even if the activity is ultimately something they would have chosen any way. We adults hate being pressured, bullied and ordered around. Children are no different (if anything, I suspect, more sensitive to it, because they haven’t yet had their spirit deaden by years of “education”).

Coercion leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Activities that we might have sought out and enjoyed of our free will become tainted, unpalatable.

When education becomes an object of coercion, we create an ugly frequency that distorts the interaction of teachers and students; parents and children. Curiosity atrophies into suspicion as the act of learning is irredeemably conflated with authoritarianism — with long-term repercussions.

One of my close friends is an intelligent, organised, motivated, assured woman whose self-perception is that she is not a good student. Why? Because as a child and teenager, she was obliged to endure rote, deadening conventional education. Unable and unwilling to conform, she adopted the label they imposed: poor student.

As an adult, she went back to school and performed astonishingly well, earning high marks and taking on leadership roles. Now, she returns to her university every year to give a talk to incoming students.

school.jpg

Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash

Freedom to learn

Children, like adults, need to be active participants in their learning. The first duty of an educator is to inspire them with the possibilities and delights of learning, not drag them screaming into classrooms and force them to fill out worksheets.

Once learning has been established in kids’ minds as a positive, rewarding experience, in which they have agency and the freedom to express themselves, they will be willing and able to cope with the inevitable patches of boredom and incomprehension.

Seeking consent in education doesn’t mean we have to entertain children, or pander to their every whim, but it does mean giving them a fair say.

 

Man being … by nature, all free … no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. –John Locke, Chapter 8

 

 

 

by Cila Warncke

How to Make your Best Students Better

The one percent

As a kid, and through high school, I loved standardized tests. Because I was the maddening specimen who scored in the 99th percentile without a flicker of effort.

Given the bias in standardized tests, it’s not surprising. I was a white kid who had been reading voraciously since age four. I was going to ace anything that measured “verbal” skills, which are, of course, in the context of the tests, reading and writing skills.

Being a killer test taker had advantages. My high school SAT and ACT scores got me into an Ivy League university, and scooped a National Merit Scholarship to help pay for it. Not bad for a poor kid from a decaying seaside town in Oregon.

test.jpg

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

Feeding the need

Being Little Miss 99th Percentile felt good. My teachers liked it because I brought up the class average. I liked it because it got me positive attention. My parents? They didn’t care, which is perhaps why I cared so much. Acing those tests was more than an academic achievement, it was much-needed validation. Terrified of losing that, I gravitated towards subjects that came easy: English, history, communication, psychology.

Unfortunately, one thing they didn’t teach in first-year psych was that effort counts for more than “intelligence”. Though, to be fair, the results of Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck’s landmark study on the relationship between praise and motivation weren’t published till 1998, my second year of college.

Mueller and Dweck gave kids a series of tests. One group was praised for their intelligence, the other for their effort. They found that the children who were praised for intelligence were reluctant to try more difficult tests, while those praised for effort were eager to try harder tasks.

Kids singled out for “intelligence” were afraid of doing anything that might show them up. Like those kids, I avoided challenges, got good grades and learned almost nothing.

Opportunities lost

Each month, as I make my student loan payment (still chipping away at that. Thank you American tertiary education system), I think about the classes I avoided: Spanish, math, organic chemistry. I went to university planning to major in chemistry and go on to med school. Sophomore year, I changed to English lit.

It was the right decision, made for the wrong reasons. My motivation wasn’t love of literature and language but fear of math and science. If I couldn’t waltz into an exam and out with an A, I wasn’t even going to try.

teaching.jpg

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

The teacher’s view

Looking back, I wish teachers had pushed me more — especially in the subjects I was good at. Maybe, then, I would have realized my skills weren’t “innate” and would have learned to apply myself.

But, as a teacher myself, I can’t blame them. Having a “good” student, one who enjoys and seems to effortlessly absorb the material, is a treat. S/he is one student you don’t have to worry about, one whose enthusiasm and aptitude makes you feel good about yourself as an educator, even if you don’t really deserve the credit. It is tempting to praise the student and more or less leave them to his/her/their own devices.

Tempting, but an abdication of responsibility. Perhaps the student is doing well because h/s/t are an adept learner. In that case, you should see the work gradually improve. If you don’t, chances are they’re coasting on an existing skill set. And without intervention, they may well be self-limiting to stay within that safety zone.

Breaking out of the success trap

How do you challenge a student in an area where they excel? Here are three ideas:

Process

Once, in a job interview, I was asked: “How do you write?”

It was the first time anyone had asked about my process. Formulating an answer made me realize that I had one, and that it could be applied to other tasks.

If you have a student who shines at art, trigonometry, whatever, as them how. They might think it’s a dumb question (I did) but they will discover the work that goes into their accomplishments. Recognizing their own effort and process will help them see themselves as learners, and start to generalize those skills.

Cross-pollination

Use your students strengths to address their weaknesses. If, for example, your  student loves history but hates math, have them research the history of a mathematical concept, e.g. Who was Pythagoras and how did he come up with his theory? Thus tackling something hard becomes a chance to show off what they are good at.

Let them be the expert

Once your students have assessed their own process, reinforce that by giving them an opportunity to be the expert. Pair or small group work is a good setting to allow students to display their strengths. Set up assignments where they teach each other and grade them on how well their classmates do.

learning.jpg

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Life-long learning

We tend to think of “life-long learning” in terms of adults but, to deserve the title, it has to start in childhood. The best, that is highest-achieving, students are necessarily the best learners. They may, in extreme cases, be learning very little.

Helping them uncover their process, use their skills to address new challenges, and share their strategies with others will develop those crucial skills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Cila Warncke

Should I Have Come Out to My Students?

“Do you consider yourself part of the LGBTQ community?”

The text caught me off guard. Of course. Then I realized: Why would he know — I never said anything. 

I’d shared a link to an article about queer culture witha former English students (let’s call him Jay). He’d responded with an applause emoji — and the question.

Jay is out and proud as a Catholic teenager in a small, conservative Spanish town. His joie de vivre made every class a delight. I admired the hell out of him, but never said anything about being bi.

born this way.jpg

Photo by Levi Saunders on Unsplash

Playing safe

I’ll just be supportive, I thought.

So I taught poems by Mary Oliver and CP Cavafy, brought Attitude magazine to class along with Vogue and Wanderlust, and expressed due reverence for the fierceness of Queen Bey and Lady Gaga. That’s cool, right?

Keeping quiet

Jay’s question got under my skin because, really, he shouldn’t have had to ask.

“Definitely,” I responded. “Wasn’t quite sure about bringing it up in class.”

The more I’ve thought about it (and it’s been a lot) the poorer an excuse that seems.

I didn’t want to distract from class. My personal life isn’t important. Blah blah.

Yet I had no qualms talking about my husband, or dating men. I just elided the fact I also date women. That’s not being “appropriate”, it’s cowardice.

Taking it easy

Truth is, being straight is easy. Despite short hair and a penchant for Doc Martens I am a cis woman married to a cis man. That is so socially acceptable it obscures anything ambiguous or complicated. It brings the perpetual temptation to not mention anything that would threaten my hetero privilege.

Once, a woman I was seeing was verbally attacked over her holiday plans. My date said she would feel uncomfortable going to Russia. Instead of sympathizing this woman railed at my friend for trying to “flaunt her lifestyle”. Basically, she thought if my girl didn’t fake straightness for the benefit of Russian bigots she deserved to be gay bashed.

This conversation, which took place at a party in Ibiza, shook me. If people are like that on an island renowned for anything-goes hedonism, I don’t want to know what the rest of the world is like. So, it was/is, easier to don the invisibility cloak of straightness.

cloak.jpg

Photo by Tomas Robertson on Unsplash

What makes an ally?

Self-identifying as queer and a queer ally to myself means jack if I play it straight to the world at large. My silence amplifies jerks who think love is “flaunting your lifestyle”.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m proud of introducing my students to Cavafy and Oliver, of watching Gaga videos with them and discussing gay representation in mainstream media. But it wasn’t enough.

If I were 100% straight, it might be. As a (married) bi woman, I have a responsibility.

Cleaning out my closet

Being married is part of what stopped me from saying anything. If I were single, or dating, saying “I’m bi” probably wouldn’t raise too many awkward questions.

But I could imagine…

Wait, aren’t you married? Does your husband know? Is he bi? Do you date other people? Does that mean…? 

My students are sharp — a thousand times more woke and with it than I was at their age (or a decade later). They could have asked questions that I don’t have answers for.

That unnerved me. Which is precisely why I should have opened up.

love is love.jpg

Photo by yoav hornung on Unsplash

A real education

Being a good teacher means not pretending to know all the answers. I’m comfortable not knowing a grammar construct, or the meaning of a word, so why so awkward about admitting I haven’t solved the mysteries of love?

I’ve asked myself over and over, Should I have come out to my students? The answer is, insistently, yes.

Not just because Jay deserved to know I consider myself part of the LGBTQ community, as he gracefully put it, but because they all deserve to know that love and attraction are fluid and multi-faceted. They deserve to know that you can try things, change your mind, fall in love with one person and still be attracted to others. They deserve to know that you never have to stop exploring, questioning, loving. They deserve to know that marriage doesn’t have to be a house in the ‘burbs and 2.4 kids (though that’s available).

Like I said, they’re sharp. Chances are they already know (or suspect) much of this. Nevertheless, that doesn’t make it okay for me to sit back like, you’re on your own. 

Be there for each other

We all need allies. Every single day. And in our increasingly mean-tempered world, unity and kindness are the life-rings we have to throw to each other.

That means owning who we are, in all its delicious complexity, so others (especially, if we’re teachers, our students) have space to claim their own delicious, complicated selves.

banner.jpg

Photo by Mercedes Mehling on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

by Cila Warncke

Storytelling: Education

Storytelling is the essence of communication. The elements of storytelling are like letters of the alphabet. When you know how to use them, you can tell your best story.

Element 14: Education

Great stories do more than just entertain, they teach (in an entertaining way).

Case study: Raw Beet 

raw-beet-coverWhat it is:

Raw Beet is a cookbook covering four popular ways of eating: gluten free, raw, vegan and low glycemic-index (GI). Based around simple ingredients and straight-forward techniques, it educates people who want to learn more or adopt these nutrition options.

Why it matters:

Publishing a raw, vegan, gluten free or low-GI cookbook is like spooning water into the ocean. The market is glutted with books, most of which are celebrity-led, meaning the potential audience has to like the author. Raw Beet’s genius is pragmatism. Its angle is clean and sharp as a paring knife: Cut through the hype and moralising with clear, easy-to-prepare recipes.

Instead of preaching, it offers practical advice, including dietary descriptions, ingredient tips, and lists of food suppliers, for anyone who wants or needs to eat raw, gluten free, vegan or low-GI. Whether the goal is beating allergies, managing chronic illnesses, losing weight, or experimenting with new dishes, Raw Beet’s emphasis on education makes the process accessible and inclusive.

In their own words:

“With the help of our cooks and other contributors, we have tried to put together a collection of fairly simple recipes that can be served formally or informally, using ingredients that can be bought easily.”

Read more

Practice: “Flowery language can be effective in the right forum; however, overly embellished sentences do not belong in your informative [writing]. Keep your verbiage simple and straightforward, or your reader will pay too much attention to your overuse of adjectives and adverbs.” Angelique Caffrey via Explore Writing

Remember: “Learn the names of everything: birds, cheese, tractors, cars, buildings.”
~Natalie Goldberg

by Cila Warncke

Moving Words (Rock’n’Roll Shoes)

I moved house this week. For the third time in four months.

“Do you always move that much?”

“Actually,” I confessed. “Three months is a pretty long stint in one place for me.”

This is true. There was the year I moved every eight weeks. The long-haul year spent shuttling between America, Ibiza, London and Myanmar.

There were non-moving years: Glasgow 2010; London 2012. Periods of compression. On release, I tumbled from place to place in a blur of kinetic energy.

Always a spur: Don’t get stuck. Don’t miss out. Don’t settle (for less).

On at least three occasions I left a city with only a suitcase, giving or throwing away everything in excess of 20kg. “It is desirable that a man… live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety,” writes Henry David Thoreau. I came close.

This week, boxes and suitcases went into my car and were joined by my cat. Unprecedented adult privilege and responsibility. Undreamt gratitude. The sun was hot and bright as I ferried boxes. White blossoms lingered amidst the almond trees’ fresh green leaves. When I took a break at the cafe, the owner sat and chatted then wouldn’t let me pay for my tea. The neighbouring farmer lent me fruit-crates to pack my books.

Vague anxiety shrouded me like fog. It always does when I move. This time literal and figurative sunshine burnt it off. The irresistible smile of someone who’s a reason to stay. Unpacking clothes instead of piling them in the donation bin of a charity shop. Restoring my books to their shelves. Running the familiar road to San Carlos.

I wouldn’t miss a single move. Every bounce taught me something (the hard falls in particular). To stay is a new education. I am choosing something now, to paraphrase Adrienne Rich, choosing to live with all my intelligence.