Me, too. Thanks, franglish, for using a common-sense “real world” model in your grading. Group projects may be a necessary nuisance in the real world, but I must be living in a different real world from the one in which this teacher operates. If he thinks it’s so important to prepare his students for the real world, why not teach them how to read, analyze, and write instead?</p>
<p>Seems like a snotty power game to me. Momlove, you say it’s a private school, which probably means you or your son can have an impact on classroom requirements with some articulate complaining to the administration. If this had happened in our house (and thank the gods it didn’t - group projects were traumatic enough without the automatic zero bit), my kids would have exerted plenty of peer pressure to get the lazy team member to comply. One in particular then would have brought in her own questions every day and protested to the teacher after class if they weren’t accepted. She then would have visited the principal’s office on her own steam (which would have been coming out of her ears ). At that point she’d have gotten a parent involved, and we’d have escalated the protests. </p>
<p>We all know that life isn’t fair. That doesn’t justify unfairness, or mean that unfair treatment should go without protest. A zero is fine when the student doesn’t do the work. It’s wrong otherwise.</p>
<p>My 11th gr daughter just had a similar incident, group project, students allowed to pick groups. My daughter was in a group and then was moved out of the group by the teacher, into a group that was having issues. They had a lot of problems with communication with 2 of the 4 members, wouldn’t return calls, missed meetings, etc. They finally got together and spent 8 hours working on the project, at my house so I know they were actually working. They each left with some finish up work and planned to meet after school the following week to finalize their presentation. Well, only 2 showed up. Rescheduled the meeting 3 more times, in the teacher’s room, still only two showed. On the day of the presentation, they met early before school, again 2 no-shows. When they did their presentaion, the 2 no-shows had no clue what was going on. </p>
<p>They ended up with a C on the project, which is very heavily weighted. Because of this, it will be impossible for my daughter to get an A for the quarter. My daughter and the other group member who did her part are very upset. Teacher has an “oh well” attitude and told my daughter she would still have a B for the quarter. I offered to call or email the teacher, but my daughter said no. The parent of the other girl is really angry also. She will most likely make a stink, so we will see how it goes. The thing that bothers me the most about this is that the teacher knows the other two kids didn’t do their part, the meetings the missed were with him. And the fact that he moved my daughter from her chosen group, where she had already participated and started working on their project, to this group really irks me. And the group that my daughter was in and helped lay the foundation for their project, got an A+. Too bad more teachers aren’t like franglish! On a positive note, my daughter is taking it all in stride.</p>
<p>Easy enough to solve. It’s not that hard to write questions. The grading policy is stupid, yes, and you might want to complain, yes, but… how hard would it be to write extra questions every day and just have some in reserve to hand out? I’d bet it would take an extra minute.</p>
<p>^^^ Sorry for your frustrating situation, fishymom. The teacher in your d’s case seems to be overlooking her responsibility to evaluate students individually. It’s hard to see that as anything other than laziness. The complacent attitude from the teacher about getting an overall B is mega-annoying! Grades are obviously important, and if a student TRULY did enough work to earn an A, that’s the grade he or she should have.</p>
<p>Agree with dmd77. Both my kids have been in group projects in which they were assigned to work with non-performers. I warned them in 9th grade that they should plan to pick up the slack for the non-performers if they cared about the grade. So…sure enough, each of them had an instance in which they had to do all of the work for the others. Didn’t complain or tell the teacher, just turned it in. </p>
<p>So I agree that having your son take an extra question for the group would be easier than potentially irritating the teacher by complaining.</p>
<p>Another hater of group projects, but I don’t even see the point of this one. It takes about 10 seconds to come up with a question about a book. I’d have the kids spend five minutes on this, they pool the questions and make sure they all have the master list. Even if one kid doesn’t come up with any questions, how long can it take for the other three to come up with enough extra to cover him?</p>
Boy, you nailed it. My son likes this teacher in a quirky way, but this is a total power game.</p>
<p>I would not have brought this up with the teacher except for the fact that we have scheduled conferences next week anyway and I will be interested in hearing his explanation (besides the fact I think its so stupid and I have a low threshold for stupidity). Also, son has 100% on every quiz, test and other assignment, so what else would we talk about? I agree that maybe son should just do the work for the other students. I wonder if the teacher would even care.</p>
<p>As an aside, last year, my son’s Advanced Spanish III teacher offered extra credit to the students, in the following manner: the students would play some type of vocabulary game, and the 5 students who got the most correct answers would throw paper wads in the trash can from across the room. Whichever student made the most baskets received the extra credit points. Huh?</p>
<p>I like thoughtful group projects because they teach a variety of organizational and social skills that are important in the real world.</p>
<p>I loathe the group project that the OP’s S has to do. What it’s teaching is cheating, not ethical collaboration. It’s not as if the hard working students can force the other students to do the required reading. So, the only way the hard working students can get good grades will be if they write the required questions for those who are lazy, and then the lazy ones turn in those questions as if they wrote them.</p>
<p>Where is that teacher’s mind? I don’t understand how a teacher could create such a stupid group project. It’s not a group project at all except as a project in cheating.</p>
<p>Every single one I’ve ever had involved me working ten times harder than everyone else in the group because they were too lazy to do the work themselves.</p>
<p>Last big science project I had (with assigned groups), one girl had the gall to call me bossy because I kept asking her if she would “please help me identify and label some of these.”</p>
<p>My other group member was never at our table. He was on the other side of the room acting stupid the entire time. And he yelled at me when I asked him to help. </p>
<p>So I just took the damn project home and spent 5 hours straight on it to finish it by myself. Of course, all three of us got the “A.” </p>
<p>I’ve also had huge video projects to do in the past. Assigned groups again. I had to do all the research, write the scripts, decide on the wardrobe, figure out how everything was supposed to filmed, and spend the six hours editing and four hours burning it to DVD by myself. </p>
<p>It was way too much work for one person. Especially considering none of them took their acting seriously. </p>
<p>Which is why we ended up with “B’s” on both projects.</p>
<p>And those are the just the projects I remember the most.</p>
<p>If I ever become a teacher, I vow to never assign group projects.</p>
<p>To the OP, no, of course it’s not fair, and I would definitely raise a complaint. Penalizing kids for the behavior of their peers just breeds animosity among them. Trust me. I know firsthand.</p>
<p>If the teacher will not change, your child (with or without you) could go to the principal to discuss this. This can be done in a way that is thoughtful, not angry, and might have some effect. I also think that talking with principals is more effective when done in a way that addresses an injustice to the whole class, not just one kid. If you child has a good grade in the class, and the complaint to the principal is not about grades per se, there is even more credibility. Another big help is going in with another parent or other parents.</p>
<p>Otherwise, yes, your child should have a question in reserve each day, in case someone doesn’t do their work.</p>
<p>I doubt the teacher would really care if someone had an extra question for the group in the case of someone forgetting or not having one. But a student could check with the teacher just to make sure.</p>
<p>Particularly in light of this teacher’s goal of teaching kids about the “real world”; if in my world I am working with a group on a project and someone doesn’t do their part, I usually do it myself so that the job will get done. That doesn’t feel like I’m cheating or being unethical. Annoying, maybe, but not cheating.</p>
<p>Franglish - I love your way of grading group projects. </p>
<p>My sons have done some group projects that were fabulous learning experiences. They worked out when they could pick their own groups. However, we’ve had some terrible experiences with assigned groups. On two occasions, in the group my son was assigned to, the girls were not allowed to get together with boys outside of school (due to cultural/religious reasons). It ended up that the boys did all of the work and they all got the same grade.</p>
<p>To the OP it’s totally unfair. If the teacher doesn’t change it after talking to her I would advise my son to have an extra question ready.</p>
<p>^^ Agree, not cheating and more problem solving. OP are you certain that problem solving isn’t the underlying lesson? I don’t know. I pick and choose battles if I’m advocating for my kids and this isn’t a battle I would choose given it’s one day of homework but I would certainly give my kids several ideas to “manage” the slacker from having pre-arranged reminders, extra questions "handy’ and any other ideas I could come up with. If you have a parent/teacher conference…and how interesting we don’t have those for high school age students…you could certainly ask the teacher what the lesson is…maybe I’m just not feeling morally indignant enough but it really seems way too minor to drag up the school administrative ladder. If your son is really lathered up about this, maybe talk him down alittle or help him get some perspective, there will many injustices on his path through life. As far as the Spanish class, I personally know my son’ has a teacher that has silly little ways for kids to earn a few extra credit points. My youngest son is a horrible grade grubber and gets all steamed up about perceived injustices and knowing him I personally think it’s the teachers way of dealing with those kids that are agressive about every single grade point. I adore my son’s tenacity, but it can become tiresome…teachers are human.</p>
<p>We just went through a battle with a teacher over a final group project grade, had to take the issue to the vice principal (because teacher’s math did not make sense!) and we won!
Teacher was attempting to make the grading fair by assigning a group project grade (same for all group members) and an individual effort component of the grade (a combination of confidential peer assessments and teacher assessment of that particular group member’s efforts). Good concept! But what he was doing with the two grades was this: say group grade was 85% (a B) and effort grade was 90% (an A). He was assigning a project grade of (0.85 X 0.9)=76% a C! We went round and round and could not explain to him that combining an A and a B grade should never yield a C, so his method was flawed!! He was stubborn, said the system has worked fairly for years (apparently he has been doing this for at least two years, scary…). We finally sat down with vice principal who ended up throwing out this particular component of the grade for our D, giving her a final grade based on the rest of the year’s work which were are individual projects and all A’s.</p>
<p>I forgot about the whole dynamic where the kid who cares about the grade does all the work and the lesson the others learn is that they can ride on the tails of the one kid who cares. I’d blocked it out. As for college, the only group project I can think of is one my daughter had in a foreign language class where they got to pick their own partners, and I know my son does labs, but he hasn’t said that his grade depends on lab partners, etc. For the most part, my kids were graded on their own work and no one else’s in college. I realize that in some jobs, group projects happen but in a lot of jobs they don’t. I’m responsible for the work I do in my practice, my physician is responsible for how he treats me, the woman who cuts my hair keeps my business only if she does a good job, I pick people to do work on my house who show up and do the work honestly, etc. That’s the real world too. And in the real world there is usually recourse – you can go to a boss if someone is not pulling their weight, there is a human resources department, etc. Students have no recourse, except their parents, with a teacher like this.</p>
<p>Well, my son isn’t “lathered up” about it, but I just think it’s ridiculous, and so will take advantage of the opportunity to ask a question about it during conferences. I guess I hadn’t really thought of it as a group project, since it is just their daily homework, but that’s an interesting way to look at it. Perhaps my son will just have to do the other students’ daily work in this class. Doesn’t seem like it will help the other students at all, though. I have never complained to any of his teachers about anything ~ he has always insisted on managing everything himself ~ so I usually just let him handle things and they do usually work out. Believe me, I have often bitten my tongue through any number of these kinds of scenarios. This does matter to his grade, though so I think it’s worth bringing up; so far he has 2 grades of zero and a good portion of the grade so far is based on these daily assignments. Knowing his personality, I do think it’s just a snotty power game. Sometimes teachers need to know they will be held accountable. However, I will do so in a diplomatic and non-confrontational manner.</p>
<p>Ohhh…I’m getting a twitch just at the mention of group projects!<br>
In freshman year, D had one video project (of many) where assigned group members lived up to forty miles apart from each other. All four were involved in different sports/dance teams. There were music lessons and other scheduled weekend classes to work around. One had a religion/culture that had to be worked around. There were bus riders who could not get to school early or stay late during the week. And since none drove at this time, all were dependent upon parents’ schedules. And all four were in other honors classes that had (what I felt) excessive amounts of hw. And there was Very Limited class time allotted to the project. And yes, group grade, no matter who contributed anything—and one group member was never available and did very little at all.<br>
I thought my D would go off the deep end…</p>
<p>Many other parents (besides me) must have complained…because 2 years later, S had noticeably fewer group projects–thank God!</p>
<p>Just<em>A</em>Mom, that is a really scary story. </p>
<p>One of the big differences between the real real world and school as real world is that in the real world, you’ve acquired some experience and know ways to handle this kind of issue. If the teacher really wants to make the group projects a teachable moment, he should be giving students advice on how to handle things when someone is slacking. It doesn’t sound like this teacher is doing that at all. momlove, has your S asked the teacher straight out for ways to deal with this situation? </p>
<p>Another thing that scares me is plagarism in group projects. D1 had a nasty situation in 5th grade where one member of her group did nothing while the other group members did the lion’s share of the work. The slacker was supposed to write up one particular section, and (big surprise) left it to the last minute. The slacker said the section would be written the final night, got everyone else’s work, and said it would all be put together that night. The next morning, at the start of class, there was the completed report. The other team members were relieved, until the papers came back with a big fat F. Turns out the slacker copied from the textbook, word for word. :rolleyes:. Big, big, big life lesson, but oh so badly handled by the teacher. Because really, when you are 10 years old, you’re not really thinking about the possibility of a group member plagarizing part of your group project. </p>
<p>The thing that really frightened me was when I asked friends for their opinions, and several mentioned that they’d had group projects in college where a team member, unbeknownst to them, submitted plagarized work. There were some very close calls with expulsion. </p>
<p>D2 tends to take over group projects; she complains that people won’t do things the way that she likes, so she’s happy to do the entire thing herself.</p>
<p>If the teacher says that this prepares kids for the “real world,” you might want to mention that in the real world, paying customers often go over the heads of troublesome employees to their supervisors to complain about them, and that often management disciplines the employees. This is a private school, right?</p>
<p>The only time a student should be docked for the efforts of others in their group is if being in a group in the first place was optional. Absolutely bring this up and raise a stink. Go to the teacher first, with your child present, then if you don’t get satisfaction contact those further up the chain of command. </p>
<p>One caveat: make sure you allow the teacher to explain the situation first as it may be different from what your child said. You can then ask questions to clarify and please be calm and reasonable. </p>
<p>Good Luck…I have been a teacher for 20 years and never require interdependent group work.</p>
). At that point she’d have gotten a parent involved, and we’d have escalated the protests. </p>