Summary Of AinT No Makin It

Jay Macleod’s ethnography, Ain’t No Makin It, sheds light on the institute of education in America and how the country’s capital economy both mirrors and produces inequality by creating hierarchies that make social mobility obsolete. He does this through the use of two groups of predominantly Caucasian and predominantly African American youth who reside in the same low income neighborhood and attend the same school. He soon learned that in contrast to the Hallway Hangers, the predominantly white group who for the majority believed that there was no escape from their socioeconomic background, the Brothers, the predominantly African American group do aspire to hold middle class jobs in the future that provided stable incomes and commit to long term relationships with significant others. However, in his pursuit to conclude his research on the two groups MacLeod found that with the exception of one or two, members from neither of the groups were able to climb up the social ladder and bring about change to their status. Although the two groups did share a common upbringing, they differed in race, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes and therefore their failure to achieve success cannot be seen as mutual.

ESL is stands for English as a Second Language, which is a program that?s mainly developed to supplement the Bilingual Education in order to give extra help to the immigrants to learn English. ?The profession of teaching English as a second language within the United States began to expand in the 1960s in response to increasing numbers of immigrant and refugee children entering the country, as well as to the growing numbers of international students attending U.S. universities? (Collier and Ovando, 1998). Students in the ESL program receive the instruction of their level of English proficiency, so they can learn the English from the very basic level. Once they get better with their English skills, they will be able to move out the ESL program and be as competitive as the native speakers of English in other subject classes. The first decades of ESL programs fails to help students with academic work in math, science, social studies, and other curricular areas but English. In order to improve this situation, ESL programs started to focus more in helping students with their academic works during the 1950s and 1960s (Collier and Ovando, 1998).

Good, M. E., Masewicz, S., & Vogel, L. (2010). Latino English language learners: Bridging achievement and cultural gaps between schools and families. Journal of Latinos & Education, 9(4), 321-39. doi: 10.1080/15348431.2010.491048

Jay MacLeod in his ethnographic study “Ain’t No Makin’ It” indicates how education can play a pivotal role in reproducing class inequality over generations. He does so through analysis and observation of two groups of young men. The first group self-titled the “Hallway Hangers” are mostly made up of white youth, while the second group labeled the “Brothers” are chiefly comprised of young black men. The Hallway Hangers defy American Achievement Ideology, which suggests that success can be achieved through hard work, and do not believe that their schools could provide opportunities for success. In contrast, the Brothers seemed to really care about the education they receive.

Sean Reardon of the Center for Education Policy Analysis wrote, “If we do not find ways to reduce the growing inequality in education outcomes – between the rich and the poor – schools will no longer be the great equalizer we want them to be.” President Obama’s “Race to the Top” policy will perpetuate race and class inequality in America’s education system. Low-income students as a group already have poorer academic performance, grade point averages and standardized test scores, than higher-income students. In “Ain’t No Makin It,” author Jay Macleod depicts the Adjustment Class taught by Jimmy Sullivan as an example of how “culturally responsive pedagogy” can motivate students academically while helping them maintain their street identities. The Obama Administration’s 2009, "Race to the Top" competition has been greatly damaging to lower income schools around the country, by enforcing policies that making it much less likely that students will have minority teachers with shared backgrounds like Jimmy Sullivan.

financial issues, segregation, subtractive schooling, and the overall school climate may negatively impact their overall performance. Jay MacLeod brings to light these issues in his book, Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. The book, which reports the author’s findings on fifteen boys living in public housing and their overall educational and life success over several years. The book centered around the achievement ideology, which is the belief that success can only be obtained through hard work and education (MacLeod, 2009). Under this belief, factors such as race and socioeconomic status do not impact one’s success

Growing up from a different culture, Richard Rodriguez looks back on his experience on how he faced the situation as the child of Mexican immigrants. According to his 1982 memoir, “Hunger of Memory”, Rodriguez uses his own observation “to argue that if the children of immigrants are to succeed in the United States, they must separate themselves from their home culture and immerse themselves in the English oriented atmosphere of the American school” (980). In “Aria”, Rodriguez has created an autobiographic essay of his childhood. In his essay, the author is against bilingual educators, who believe that children in their first years of school should be educated in their native language. According to Rodriguez this education method is wrong, it won’t be helpful, therefore children should be knowledgeable in the same language as the public one. The author’s main point is to strongly motivate children of immigrant parents to adopt English as their primary language in order to comprehend public society and have a better future.

Social reproduction is examined closely by Jay Macleod in his book "Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood." His study examines two groups of working class teenage boys residing in Clarendon Heights, a housing project in upstate New York. The Hallway Hangers, a predominately white peer group, and the Brothers, an all African American peer group with the exception of one white member. Through the use of multiple social theories, MacLeod explains social reproduction by examining the lives of these groups as they experience it, being members of the working class in society. These social theories are very important in understanding the ways in which social classes are reproduced.

The first student that I conducted the lesson with was a girl I named Shiloh. Shiloh was an eight-year girl that was in the second grade, but would be entering in the third grade in the coming Fall. Her mother explained that she was an ESOL level two student. She was born in America, but both parents are Hispanic. The father is Cuban and the mother is from Venezuela. At home Shiloh’s family mainly communicates in Spanish. Shiloh’s mother explained that she wanted her daughter to speak Spanish at home because she does not want her to not learn Spanish or forget “where she comes from.” As I learned in TSOL I many parents do this this because they do not want their child

For the past six years, I have had the privilege of sharing my first language, Spanish, and Spanish culture as a teacher at a small private elementary school in a small rural town where diversity is almost non-existent. It has been a pleasure to open up a window to the outside world in the classrooms of this school where the students and I get to explore Spanish culture and language without having to leave town. My experience sharing my culture as well as my bilingual skills, however, extends beyond the elementary school classroom. Prior to teaching Spanish at the elementary school level, I worked as a Spanish-English translator and interpreter at various companies, and I also taught Spanish to adults.

In his book, Ain't No Makin' It, Jay MacLeod interprets the experiences of two groups of young men, the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers, living in a public housing project located in Boston. There are many way to understand their experiences. While MacLeod interpreted their experiences in terms of social reproduction, I interpreted their experiences through norms, values, and ideology. Because of my understanding of these terms, I am able to analyze why each group of boys carry themselves the way they do.

Black males enter educational environments questioning if they belong while trying to survive. Schools reflect critical factors that impact how Black males see themselves and how they envision their futures. Brooms (2016) asserts that school culture cannot understand the context of the lived experiences of Black males within education without positioning them as victims of the system. However, it is due to “institutional racism, intergenerational poverty, and the lack of meaningfully sustained educational reform and community development (Brooms, 2016)” that disproportionately puts Black males at risk for educational failure. Polite and Davis (1999) adds that “to be an African American male in school and society places one at risk for a

The article Principles and Practices of Sociocultural Assessment: Foundations for Effective Strategies for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms, is written to inform the readers about different types of practices that teachers can take into action when working with ESL students. In this article, it mentions how different principals help to accommodate the ESL students. One of the principals that was mentioned was is that learning is social. In the article, it was mentioned that learning is social because it helps students to understand and use interaction with others to share meaning in a social setting (Smith, Teemant, & Pinnegar, 2004, P. 39). In the article, another principal that helps ESL students is that teaching is assisting. The meaning

1. Family problem – family issues affect students performance in school as students are not cognitively developed but psychologically,emotionally, or affectionately developed too therefore if they are in a bad state or when family issues such as child abuse,sibling rivalry and many more are burdened on students there is the possibility for the student to flop especially in a case where the student is an excellent child.

Bilingual” (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). The objective of the ESL students is to learn how to speak, read, and write in English and know about the system of the school too. That learning will help them with other courses in school. ESL students have come from all over the world in America to study. Statistically, the number of immigrants in the USA is growing quickly. This quote shows us that