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Group Projects - What Should a Child Do if Team Mates are not Contributing?


TruBluMOM

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Hoping that maybe a teacher or two are on here who could provide some perspective.  My son is in middle school, and so far this year, he has been assigned three group projects, where the teacher assigns group membership.  My child is not passionate about academics, more middle of the road, but he's not a slacker either.  One of the three groups was awesome - they were creative, supportive of each other, and put in sufficient time to complete the task.  The other two groups however have been awful!  The other kids just goof off and won't put in any time to complete the projects.  Getting my son to do homework is often times a chore, but right now I honestly can't get him to stop (he's working like 4 hours a night) trying to get the whole project done by himself.  He took the initiative to talk to the teacher, but the teacher just responds that that's the way some groups are.

 

What should my student do?  What should I do as his parent?

 

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Oh wow, that is frustrating.

 

Good on your son for taking the initiative to talk to the teacher, that's a really big step for a lot of middle schoolers. I wish his attempt had been a bit better rewarded.

 

Nobody likes to be That Parent, but is it possible you could contact the teacher directly, and share your concerns?

 

Or perhaps arrange to have the whole group over once a week or so until the project is done, where you or your husband can help facilitate groupwork getting accomplished (if you're able)?

 

I hope this works out for you and your son!

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He took the initiative to talk to the teacher, but the teacher just responds that that's the way some groups are.

With a teacher that obviously doesn't care, you're kind of screwed.  It's the same way in the adult working world with supervisors that don't give a shit about obvious slackers or other problem-makers, presumably because taking any action against them results in more paperwork they have to fill out and more work for them to do (which is most likely the overall "lesson" he's trying to teach here)

 

Your kid will probably just grow up learning to despise "group projects" as a result of this, much like myself and probably most of the rest of the world.  Welcome to the club, bucko.

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Salted Karamel

I can't speak as a teacher or parent but when I had group projects in college with lazy group members, I fired the nonperforming group members. As in I took their names off the project and informed the teacher that those individuals did not do jack shit despite constant prodding, and it was my sincerest recommendation that they receive zero credit.

 

Teacher's right in that sometimes in life you have to pick up the slack of others because someone needs to get it done. But it's also a harsh life truth that if you're the person not contributing, you don't get to be loftily carried by others. Give those lazy shits some harsh life truth.

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Honestly, this is why I don't assign groups projects in the courses I teach. Even when I went to graduate school for business management and everything was group work, you still occasionally had groups that let one person carry the whole team.

 

Usually, the best thing for teachers to do is include peer evaluations at the end of a group project. That way, individual contribution has more impact on the students' grades. If the teacher doesn't care though, then you're honestly stuck. Only other option I can think of is filing a complaint farther up the chain of command, but that isn't going to do anything in the short term to help your son. It's one of those unfortunate unfair situations in education that most people have experienced many times over.

 

(To share my worst group project: in my management program, I had all three of the other members of my group project tell me on the day the project was due that they didn't have access to the internet until after the deadline. The due date was 5:00pm on Thanksgiving, so I had to scramble and spend the entire holiday isolated and putting everything together at the last minute instead of eat Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Two of my group members weren't even Americans and didn't even celebrate Thanksgiving. This was also the only professor who didn't ask for peer evaluations on the group projects. Honestly, I was happy to learn that our group got the lowest grade in the class.)

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Do you know if the students are graded individually  or as a group? If they're graded individually, it's possible the teacher will take your son's partners' lack of effort into account and give them bad grades and your son a good grade. Were the group members assigned specific roles? If so, it may be time for your son to say "I've done what I was assigned to do; it's not my responsibility do anyone else's work." Hope this helps!

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1 hour ago, Mezzo Forte said:

Honestly, this is why I don't assign groups projects in the courses I teach....

Thank you for doing that; that's why I didn't like it when my teachers would assign group projects: the students knew I cared about my grades and would just let me do all or most of the work. I couldn't get them to do anything because they were the "D" and "F" students who didn't care about, or like, school; they felt everything the teachers said or asked was too hard, difficult and pointless, so they gave up trying.

 

In high school, one physics teacher assigned group assignments, but required everyone in a group to be responsible for separate sections of a lab experiment. That felt like a better way of conducting group assignments, although I still preferred filling out my own work, myself.

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1 hour ago, InquisitivePhilosopher said:

Thank you for doing that; that's why I didn't like it when my teachers would assign group projects: the students knew I cared about my grades and would just let me do all or most of the work. I couldn't get them to do anything because they were the "D" and "F" students who didn't care about, or like, school; they felt everything the teachers said or asked was too hard, difficult and pointless, so they gave up trying.

If I were to ever assign group projects, I would really take the peer evaluations seriously. The way your physics teacher divided the roles sounds wise as well if you can't trust the students to divvy up the work properly. (Sometimes, that's one of the skills that group work is supposed to facilitate, but I think it'd be nice if earlier introduction to group work came with more rigid roles so students could eventually intuit how to best divvy up the work of future projects.)

 

In college, my sister had a class where she knew the material so well that the professor would sometimes basically try to get her to run the lecture for him (which she wasn't having because she isn't the one getting paid to teach.) The guy assigned a group project where everyone gets one grade, regardless of who contributes, and my sis not only was assigned the poorest-performing students in the class, she even had someone in the group who was auditing the class. Like, this person isn't even doing this class for a grade or any college credit, but is still on the team. She would have had an easier time herding cats than managing this stuff.

 

Now, I'm a musician, so my 'group projects' nowadays come in the form of organizing chamber music. That's a bit more fun. :P

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5 hours ago, TruBluMOM said:

Hoping that maybe a teacher or two are on here who could provide some perspective.  My son is in middle school, and so far this year, he has been assigned three group projects, where the teacher assigns group membership.  My child is not passionate about academics, more middle of the road, but he's not a slacker either.  One of the three groups was awesome - they were creative, supportive of each other, and put in sufficient time to complete the task.  The other two groups however have been awful!  The other kids just goof off and won't put in any time to complete the projects.  Getting my son to do homework is often times a chore, but right now I honestly can't get him to stop (he's working like 4 hours a night) trying to get the whole project done by himself.  He took the initiative to talk to the teacher, but the teacher just responds that that's the way some groups are.

 

What should my student do?  What should I do as his parent?

 

Ouch, that's a tough situation when the teacher is being a bit dismissive-- I think that's rather irresponsible on their part as the teacher. I always hated group projects in school for similar reasons and while you do need to learn how to handle some of it, most teachers and professors later will step in and have peer-reviews that heavily affect the lazy student's grade or will work with you to scale down the project slightly because they can't stand freeriders.

 

First, that's amazing that he's stepping up the cover the others' abysmal work ethic. I know that's rough, but people really respect that.

 

I don't know exactly what you son said to the teacher but I'll suggest a few things to try. If your son isn't comfortable confronting the teacher again, these are also questions you can ask the teacher yourself.

 

1) Ask how the grades will work on this project; will the teacher give the others zeros for not helping?

If the teacher is still planning on having all group members share the same grade, that's not right.

2) Emphasize that he's had this problem in several group projects now, and ask, if this situation happens in the future can your son can do the project himself on a scale appropriate for an individual project? Or see if the group can assign individual roles/split up the work at the beginning of the project so that if the others do not complete their portion of it then your son isn't penalized.
(I.e. if they had 5 group members total and were supposed to do a 15 slide powerpoint with 10 sources, that he be allowed to do 1/5th of that (3-5 powerpoint slides, with 3-ish sources).

  Or, if they won't scale down the projects--- see if the teacher will agree to put him in groups who will pull their own weight. (Have your son provide you with a list of kids from the first group or who he knows hold their own in projects so that you can provide "suggestions" to the teacher in case they try to say they don't know who that'd be.)

 

Your side of it:

Keep track of how many nights and approximately how many hours per night he's spending on this project so that you'll be able to use it as a reference of how much of a burden this is on a single student. The general homework guideline according to the National Education Association is about 10 minutes of homework per grade level (so a 7th grader's would be about 70 to 80 minutes), and while I know many schools disregard that it's still a point most educators or administrators are aware of and could be used to help illustrate how ridiculous the situation is.

 

If the teacher isn't going to budge when your kid asks or tells them about the situation then you'll need to tell the teacher that you're not okay with "group projects" if the teacher is going to allow the entire burden to be put on a single student (especially if the kids are all sharing the resulting grade). Sometimes teachers will only respond to a parent, so even if your son asks the above questions use the same or similar ones to see if you get a result. You can meet with the teacher in person or email them. (I personally like email so that there's no way for the teacher to backpedal or deny what they've said in case you have to go above their head later. Documentation is a godsend when dealing with problematic teachers.)

 

If the teacher still doesn't care, you can talk to the principal. I know that may seem extreme but having a middle school kid spend 4 hours per night on a project for a single class is completely unreasonable, not to mention there's no "teamwork" benefit in that sort of group project so it's not teaching your kid in valuable "how to work with others" skills, and if the teacher refused to help find a solution then you're justified in going above their head.

 

The more nuclear side of it:

Additionally, there might be something called a grievance that you can request to file that usually gets the most dismissive administrators to take you seriously (I'm not sure all systems use it, but I'd think there's something similar at least). At least where I went to school just saying you wanted to file a grievance once you'd talked to a principal usually got things fixed because a grievance here could eventually escalate all the way up to the school board if unresolved and they don't want that.

 

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Alternative, Least tested idea, and usually leads to quite a bit of confrontation with the teacher or the student being held in the middle of the disagreement with a low grade in the meantime): You can also suggest to your son that he only do part of the project (equivalent to what his part would have been if the group split up the work evenly) and submit the assignment with a note stating, respectfully, that he's done his part of the project but that the project could not be completed due to the utter lack of participation from the other group members. I'd also send in a parent note stating that although he was worried about his grade you refused to let him spend x-number of hours every night to do the rest of it when this was a group and not an individual project, and that  because it was having a negative impact on your child (and/or affecting his health or limiting his hours of sleep, etc.) You can also mention something like, you'd like the teacher to grade your child on only his part of the project due to the aforementioned factors.

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LadyWallflower

As a teacher, I usually pay close attention and take notes if I notice a group where some students are not doing their fair share of the work, I will deduct points from that student. I will also push students into doing more work. The realization that the teacher is paying attention is sometimes enough. I've also had students come to me and tell me about the problems with their group. Then, I would always interview every group member separately to hear their side of the story. (Outside of class, of course). I will always deduct points if I find a person is not doing their fair share of the work.

 

My students only do 2 group projects a year. I give them plenty of time in class to do it. By giving them class time, it is much harder to not participate, because the teacher is there, watching. Also, I have an evaluation at the end. I do all this because I care a lot about fairness. (Both of the group projects involve presentations as well. So at the very least, everyone has to remember their lines).

 

It is a shame that the teacher doesn't seem to care. Deducting points or dealing with stuff like that take extra effort. Perhaps the teacher is tired. It is easier and more convenient if you don't have to worry about that. Not that this is excusable, of course.

 

You said the student approached the teacher directly. When did this happen? During class? During the very short break between classes? After school? I would highly advise him to approach the teacher after school. At other times of the day the teacher may be distracted or doesn't have enough time to properly think about it. If he can manage to talk to the teacher after school, he can have a lengthier conversation. It is also better if other students are not around to listen in.

 

When he approaches the teacher to talk to them, he should also write a note. Students have never written a note to me, but that is because I pay attention to what they say. If this teacher is very dismissive, they might take the student more seriously if the student has a written claim. Also, some people when they are being polite will downplay things. The student may not even realize it, but it order to be polite and to not be seen as too much of a complainer, he might be subconsciously downplaying things. With a note, he can be sure to write down everything he needs to say. He shouldn't just leave the note on the teacher's desk, however. He should also talk to them directly.

 

Another possible option is what another poster suggested. He could just do his part of the project, and then write a very polite note that says the other part is not done because the other students didn't do their work. This could backfire, however. When it comes to grading, I always want to know who does what. I will adjust my grading accordingly. I don't give the same grade to every member of the group. However, this teacher might not care at all. You might want to find out how it is being graded.

 

A parent getting involved should be the last thing to happen. However, because the student is young and still in middle school, I don't think it is improper. The parent should definitely talk to the teacher, first. Do not go around them and talk to the principal or the BOE. This will really upset the teacher. You should always talk to the teacher first before you go to a different person of authority.

 

I'm sorry this is happening to your kid. And I'm sorry that I don't have any good advice. Probably everything I have to say has already been suggested, lol. However, I wish you good luck!

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I’d be telling the teacher my kid would either do the project together with their team mates or my kid would drop the project. If the other kids refuse to take responsibility  and the teacher is that nonchalant when your child voices their issues with the group then why should your child do it?

 

I don’t think so

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