Facebook games

As a child, I was extremely playful. This made me also efficient in everything that I did. I was required to do dishes by the time I was five years old. I had my own “lines” of corn to plant or harvest, or even weed before I was ten. Still, I looked for my own time to be a child. To get this time, I was forced to be very fast in doing my tasks so that I could go and play with my friends outside. Most of our games were very simple. We made our own balls and ropes to play with, and we played a lot with stones and sticks. There were no electronic games of any kind.

I was very worried when I heard that we were going to play a game on facebook. My classmates chuckled and said’ Anyango, now you have no choice!” They meant that I had to finally be on facebook in order to take part in this assignment. And I did! I went in and clicked on the first game I saw, and that was “Bubble witch saga”. Knowing myself, this is not a kind of game I would play. I do not play with witches, because I know they can be dangerous. 

However, I tried to play this game. I did not go far because I did not understand it very well. I tried to click everything there was to click, including using the hints I believed I was being given, but I did not go far. After adventuring and playing aroundh with the game, and only seeing an old witch stirring something in a pot, I gave up! I decided that I needed to venture into more productive waters.

I finally landed on the “Lost jewels.” This sounded much more fun and it was making sense. I played it on three different days, but I did not like the fact that it could ask me to make purchases with my credit card at times. Do people actually do that? It is inexpensive, of course, but I was not ready to do that for that part of the game. I started over and it allowed me to play again.

I really felt that I had connected very well with the “Lost Jewels”. The beautiful colors and the shapes were attractive, and I learned the game well to be able to play and move from one point to another. The aesthetics of it attracted me, and it was not as scary as “Bubble Witch Saga.” I won many crystals. By level 4 I had 85 and then I added 67. I do not really know what that means in comparison with other players, but I improved from level to level as I got to know the game better.

The game is very friendly. It gives you hints when you take your time to make a move. I realized, though, that it has you make the big moves on your own, and it only gives hints on the moves that have very few points. I think this also helps one to learn more, because after you see the hints, you are able to think of the big move without giving up. The game also has the spirit of facebook, and that is connection. It kept asking me if I wanted a friend to join me, or if I wanted to share my crystals with any of my friends. Although I did not do this, I thought of how much fun it would be to share the game with someone, or even how it can be played in collaboration.

The best thing that this game is how it reminded me of a childhood game I used to play; “seven stones”. While the crystals were falling after I arranged similar colors, they neatly fell on top of one another, or if I matched many colors, they got crushed and disappeared. My favorite game growing up was “seven stones”, a game that I grew to be an expert in, and one that was a lot of fun for me. We could divide ourselves into two teams; then we had seven flat stones on the ground to arrange. The stones varied in circumference so that one would arrange them according to sizes for them to stay in place, the same way I would arrange the jewels of the same color in the facebook game. If one interchanged the sizes, the stones would easily fall, and any member of the team would have to start arranging them over again. What was the other team doing while one was arranging the seven stones? They would try to hit someone with the ball. Any member of the team that was hit would have to leave and sit on the side. I was always known to be the one staying to the end of the game in whichever team I was in because I knew how to dodge the ball very much. This earned me the nickname “corner corner” because I would try my best to dodge the ball from corner to corner. I liked arranging the stones, as much as I liked arranging the jewels in this game. The only thing missing for me here was teamwork.  I will try and recruit others into playing “Lost Jewels” with me! I wish I could also show them how to play “seven stones!”

Anyango’s teacher autobiography

The influence Miss Polie had on me as a teacher was immense. There was no doubt that she was dedicated to teaching us. Those early teen years when we keenly watched adults and depended on them to shape our characters, Miss Polie was there. In both intellect and stature, she lended herself to shape our lives and, without a doubt, she did. She was my English and Swahili teacher. Tall and elegantly slender, she looked like she would be a student in our upper classes. She always wore skirts that were slightly below her knees, modeling a dress code that was punctuated by a sense of decency. Her bespectacled face could not hide her ever smiley grin.  Her confident demeanor radiated beyond her own self, and illumined everything she did, touched and taught. She taught with pomp and vigor, and she never let anyone or anything convince her that we were not capable of achieving anything we wanted to. We were her girls, and to her, we were the stars, dropped down from the heavens, only temporarily in order to brighten our shine and soar back up in the skies again, stronger and ready to take our definitive places in conquering the skies. I devoured her personality with valor, and took in her enthusiasm at every turn of it. Miss Polie injected in me the love for teaching, and my veins responded eagerly. I was hooked!

She taught me in and out of the classroom. In the classroom she taught me language; English, Swahili. She taught me reading, writing, and literature in both languages. She taught me how to be a diligent, patient and hardworking student. Out of class she taught me kindness, she taught me giving, she taught me love, and most of all, she taught me that I did not have to be rich to give. I needed a rich heart. I needed to reach out. I needed to love the things I did, and do them wholeheartedly.

I could not help but remember Mama who, like Miss Polie, had taught me during my childhood. Mama’s teachings about the two wisdoms lived in Miss Polie’s teaching, and I knew quietly in my heart that it was my duty to carry the mantra after them. And although papa wanted, begged and implored me to be a lawyer, I could not walk away from Mama and Miss Polie, feeling deep within me that I was bequeathed with their blessing to touch more lives through teaching.

And so as I waited to join the University for my Teaching Degree, I started my first job as an untrained teacher, “UT”, at a secondary school near my home. I taught English and Swahili, just like Miss Polie. I wanted the students to succeed, just like Miss Polie had helped me to succeed. I wanted them to gain wisdom, just like mama had told me to. Every day I taught with care, listened to my students, and although some were older than I was, they listened to me and respected me. They could feel that I respected them, and that I saw in them potential that they thought never existed within them.

I knew that I was making an impact when a parent approached me and asked me if it was possible for me to go to her home in the evenings and on Saturdays to tutor her children for extra pay. I was motivated and encouraged that a parent had seen in me the possibility of helping her children succeed. I looked forward to starting this mission of one-on-one teaching, with a hope that as I closely interacted with these students in school and at home, I would honestly affect their lives positively. I hoped that they would love learning just like I did.

I went on to college with the hopes of learning the art of teaching, but all in all, I realized that, just like mama had never been to school and she taught with zeal, and just like Miss Polie carried her teaching in her heart, into the classroom and outside, I had to have the glow within me to care about teaching. I could never get that from the books that I read. The books assisted me to plan and know what I would teach, but how I did it and how I cared for the students, was up to me. I saw mama’s point ever so clearly, that books will not teach me how to deal with people, how to work with them.

And then one day I lived the lessons I had learned about teaching. After being in the US for a while, I got a job as a reading tutor in a public school situated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. I could work with third graders who needed tutoring one on one on their reading skills. Once the children came to the room, I always asked them how they were. After a brief chat, we would get into the program, one that was set to be used uniformly by all students. I noticed that Mary (pseudonym) was not concentrating that morning.

“Mary, are you okay? You do not seem fine,” I said.

“I am hungry,” Mary replied wryly.

“Did you wake up late?”

“Yes, and then I missed breakfast here at school.”

I gave her the banana that I had in my lunch bag.

Her eyes lit up as she enjoyed her surprise breakfast.

Looking at me squarely, she asked, “Can I call you mama?”

I was taken aback, “Why?”

“…because you care.” She replied quickly. “I live with my step mom, and she does not care. I sleep hungry most of the times.”

“You should have told me,” I answered without thinking twice. “I can bring you something to eat. Will that help?”

“So can I?” She asked again, not letting go of her original question, still clutching her unfinished banana.

“Can you do what?” I was confused.

“…call you mama?” She was serious, and I thought to myself, “Would it interfere with my teaching? I guess not!”

“Yes you can. But you must make a promise.”

“To….”

“To do all your homework and practice reading as much as you can.” I told her as calmly as I could.

She looked at me and stretched her hand. I stretched mine to meet hers. “I promise,” she said solemnly.

I felt as though that was the moment I was being prepared for during all the previous years, especially by Mama and Miss Polie. I knew they would be very proud of me, especially if they later heard Mary’s classroom teacher commenting vivaciously one day, “What do you give them when they come down there? They are so happy. I think Mary is ready now, but she insists she wants more time with you.”

Teacher. Mama. Either way, if it worked, it was fine with me. 

Anyango’s technology autobiography

I always grin when my aunt compares her typing with mine, stating how I type fast, and how jealous she is of me. She begs me to help her type her work because she is too slow!!! I grin because I was in her shoes only a few years back. I grew up in a house, school and community without any technological device of any kind. The only machine I knew was my father’s music stereo that he used to play his records on. It was sacred, and none of us cold touch it. I always watched him clean it and changed the “needles” that made him play it better. He cleaned it by himself, operated it by himself, and transported it around the house by himself if he needed to.

Thinking of my father’s stereo, I grew up knowing that any kind of machine was sacred, and was to be handled with maximum care, almost fear. So, in awe, I looked at machines from afar. And lack of them did not help to change this mindset either. I started watching TV in my early teens, at a neighbor’s house a block away. It was the only television in a one mile radius, and most of the children my age could congregate in the good neighbor’s house to watch one favorite program, “vitimbi”, once a week. It was a half hour comedy in Swahili, and some children could walk two miles to come and see it.

Then there was the school radio. Our teacher was its master, and we could surround the small radio to listen to different programs broadcast once a week by the Kenya Institute of Education. I remember thinking there was no better job than teaching in the radio, and all the children in the country, plus their teachers, would tune in to listen to your voice! I wanted that job. It sounded so mysterious, and big!!

The most interesting of all these early experiences that made me think of technology as a wonder, were the “walk-in” cinemas we used to see once a month. We could walk to the nearest police station, about two miles away, to see the cinemas every month. I got so curious as to how the pictures were being projected on the white canvas, and so I could o early just to look at the plain white canvas before nightfall. As the rays fell on the canvas from the track, I could not help but think of the smartness of what made them; whether they were machines or people that were the authors of these amazing gadgets, I was left wondering!!

All this time, I had to marvel at technology from afar…and then came the time when I had to actually handle and deal with it. I remember how I respected my neighbor who was a secretary. She earned extra money by typing theses and dissertations for students, I being one of them. I could not believe that she could handle that amount of typing all by herself! When I finally had to type something, it was in Japan when I realized that I needed to communicate with my husband more often, and I did not have enough money to buy calling cards all the time. I learned how to type, and however slow it was, I was proud that I could finally do it. Losing an email made me cry several times, because the pain of retyping the whole thing again, one or two paragraphs, was unbearable.

In America, I learned that I had to type my own work at all times, be it for class or for work, and I quickly developed my typing skills. To date, I communicate more with email due to my early attachment to it. I also think that having never had an opportunity to handle technology at an early age has kept me always aloof about it, and it takes me time to master something, but once I do, I feel in control. I make it my priority to have my children exposed to technology so that they do not see it as a strange thing far from them, but a part of their lives. More so, I am open to learning new technologies and ways of using them in my classroom. 

Literacy definitions

What is literacy?

Literacy is not just being able to read and write, but also to have the understanding of what has been read or written. This includes the ability to critically analyze texts of any kind. Literacy, however, should encompass the ability to understand the world around, which includes knowledge that is passed to us by our communities through language, whether this knowledge is written or not.

This definition is supported by James Paul Gee who posits that “any discourse (primary or secondary) is for most people most of the time only mastered through acquisition, not learning, that is, it requires exposure to models in natural, meaningful and functional settings, and teaching is not liable to be very successful --  it may even initially get in the way.”(p.8).  Freire & Macedo state that “reading the world always precedes reading the word.” (p. 20).

What is illiteracy?

Illiteracy, therefore, can be construed as the lack of understanding or proper interpretation of the world around us, and also the texts. To support Freire and Macedo, illiteracy would mean not only the inability to read the world but also the word.

What are the characteristics of a literate person?

A literate person is aware of the world around him/her, and is capable of interpreting the knowledge presented to him/her or read to or by him/her.

 Part II

Brian Street contends that “literacy is not just a set of uniform “technical skills” to be imparted to those lacking them…but rather that there are multiple literacies in communities and that literacy practices are socially embedded” (p. 2).  Therefore his understanding of literacy is that it is not one prescribed rigid thing. It is community specific, and therefore has different thoughts and tenets.

His label, therefore, can be seen as the social use of literacy.

Ohmann (1985) agrees  with Brian Street when he says that “literacy is an activity of social groups, and a necessary feature of some kinds of social organization. Like every other human activity, it embeds social relations within it.

Anyango's early literacy narrative

I always wanted to listen to mama. I listened to mama more than I actually talked to her or told her anything. She talked to me a lot, and I listened a lot. Mama never missed a word for any situation. Having never learned how to read or write, she spoke, and her word was knowledge to me. She had explanations for everything. Every night mama dreamed, and she knew what all her dreams meant. The scary part was that most of the time her interpretations were true because her dreams could come true. She always said dreams meant the opposite, and that when you are happy at a gathering eating meat, somebody had passed away. I still cannot forget   the day she told us grandpa had passed away when she had predicted it that morning through her happy dream the previous night. From then on, I fought not to believe mama’s dreams. 

Mama was not only a dreamer of dreams. She lived in the real world, and she had told me about working hard and the importance of school. I had christened mama’s talk “The Wise Wisdom Talk.” She would take the podium and deliver this talk any time she wanted, with me as the lonesome audience. She never seemed to mind that I would drift away in deep thought and let her deliver the speech without interrupting. I realized she preferred the soliloquy, and I let her be. She was my teacher, and her words mattered, consciously or subconsciously.

“My child, I want you to work hard in school,” she would begin, “In this world of today, you must get a very good education. Don’t be like me.” She would pause and give me a look that let me know she was looking into her past, and taking a bold peek into my future. Then she would continue, “I did not have the opportunity, but you do. Work hard. But remember one thing. You must be wise. Books will give you knowledge, but you must seek wisdom; wisdom to deal with the world, and yourself; wisdom to know that books may add you wisdom, but they are not everything. That is why people go to school for many years but they still don’t know what they are doing. They forget that there is another kind of wisdom. I missed on the one from books, but I still seek the other one. As for you my child, I wish you both.”

Mama had told me this as many times as she needed to, in different words, but always with the same message. She said every word with the confidence and conviction that it would be the most valuable lesson she would ever teach me.

Papa’s way was different. He had gone to school and read books. He not only bragged about his knowledge of Queen’s English, but he was highly respected at his work place for the English he spoke and wrote. As I sat with Papa in the living room, the sky blue walls were calming to my young mind, preparing me for the day’s lesson. The lower part of the wall, a deep blue color, gave a clever contrast with the rest of the wall. Papa had taught me colors in English when I was only three. He had said this was royal blue, the Queen’s color. Any time I asked him how he knew that that was the Queen’s color, he would say, “I know everything Queen, starting from Queen’s English. I hope to visit Queen’s England someday…” Papa. He was fascinated by an unknown world to him, a country far off that he had known through a language he loved.

“In this world of today...”he would start his speeches about the importance of English that I so much dreaded for being long and monotonous, “you can’t win the battle without good English. Eeeh! You cannot. But if you know English, they all respect you; they do. You get a good job, and you get respect.” My little mind would wander away from papa’s speeches as soon as these speeches began, and I knew that in order to be papa’s friend, I had to learn English every day, and be able to speak and write it like him. He would start by telling me about his essay on “Tea” that won the Cambridge Essay contest, and his prize being a dictionary that came from Cambridge, UK.

“No one else owns a dictionary like this one in this country, mama!” He would proudly tell me. “No one!”

So I would learn the songs he taught me with gusto, and I would not let my four-year old tiny self intimidate me; neither would I forget a line in the songs he taught me, for this was my special bond with papa. He would look up words from the song in his dictionary and explain them to me.

“These are all written in Queen’s English,” he would say, smiling broadly, as if to assure me of his unwavering commitment to drill Queen’s English in me.

“Yes, Papa,” I had to be engaged in Papa’s conversation about Queen’s English if I was to survive the day, any day around him. “And I know what “thy” means; it means “your!” The only way to get papa’s daily approval was repeating his previous lessons to him. 

“Ha-ha-ha!” His laughter displayed a higher pitch than his normal speaking voice, which made it even funnier. “That’s my mama,” he would proudly say. I was named after papa’s mother. Papa was an only child, and his mother had been so dear to him. Grandma died the same year I was born, and papa was proud that her mama would live on through me. He even refused to add his surname to my name, saying that it was out of respect for his mama. He said it was even better that I was born in the morning, just like grandma’s name, Anyango, meant ‘morning sunshine.’  

“You have my brains!” Papa would say, picking me up and lifting me high, high up. Placing my forehead onto his, he would add with swelling pride, “you will speak excellent English very soon. The nincompoops will be left dilly-dallying while my mama gets to shock all of them with her clever speeches. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Papa, let’s sing ‘Just as I am’”. That was my favorite hymn of all time. I would sit on papa’s laps and sing with him while he held the book open for me to “read” and sing with him.

Just as I am without one plea

But that thy blood was shed for me

And that thou biddst me come to thee

Oh Lamb of God I come

I come…

Papa would laugh, nod approval, and then teach me the vocabulary word for the day in a sentence.

“The skeptics will not believe you just sang Queen’s English like that, and the way you are still very small, mama!” I had learned to recognize today’s word was ‘skeptic’. He must have realized I was only four because he did not tell me to guess the meaning of the word. 

“Skeptic: someone who always doubts. Mama, you are not one because you already believe you can do this!”