I’ve noticed this past year that DS is getting burned on group projects. i.e. He pretty much does the entire project while his partner(s) does almost nothing. For instance, he has a project due next week where he needs to shoot a video with his partner. They are supposed to work on it this weekend. His partner claims that he is super busy and can’t spend any time meeting with him to work on it. I can already see the scenario playing out where it’s the night before the due date, and DS will just suck it up and end up completing the entire project. What do your kids do when you have a lazy team member? DS is not sure he should talk to the teacher, because he doesn’t want to come off whiny and wants to remain friends with the other kid.
If he doesn’t want to talk to the teacher then he’s between a rock and a hard spot. That’s the only place where relief can come from. Or you could call the other student’s parents and have a heart to heart.
The first step is for your son to be more assertive with his project partner and work out a plan. If the partner can’t agree to times to work together on the project then make a project plan stating which pieces they will do separately with a timeline and then email the teacher with the plan (ccing the partner) to make sure it’s OK to do it like that.
He tried that. He told his partner that they need to meet at least an hour this weekend. His partner was very noncommittal. He said “maybe we could meet on Saturday.” I take that as a likely no. I think at this point he need to talk to the teacher and tell her in order to complete the project by the deadline he needs to finish it on his own since his partner unavailable.
As the teacher for advice…can he split into his own individual group? Or like other say, create a project plan that says who is respoinsible for what and what the due dates are.
Your son has to set his boundaries:
“If you can’t get together this weekend I will just submit it as my own work. You can do your own whenever you have time.”
I had this problem in High School. Not so much in college. Have a pretty fixed team for group projects covering multiple classes. One member turned into slug so we booted.
In high school I simply attached all emails and or text that said they could not help or participate in project as well as all inferior work to project (not popular but effective, always disclosed up front at first meeting and said they could do the same to me, if I did not pull my weight or meet a dead line) . Confronted teacher and fussed incessantly why I should be held accountable for other students poor work ethic or lack of quality work. As well as why should they get credit for my work. In the end most of my teachers started letting us pick our own teams. That worked out very well, cut my total time dedicated to group projects by 80%.
Have not had problem in college to much. Most of my peers in my major are pretty dedicated and crazy smart. Get it done and move on.
Call the partner at his home (not cell) number. When parent answers (cause no teens answer the home phone), say “hello, this is Dave Smith, I need to speak with Jim to schedule time to work on our project due this week, thanks!”
Upbeat, positive tone.
A friendly email to the parents would work (assuming there is a directory). Mention that your son is hoping to set up a plan to meet with their son this weekend and then suggest that this weekend is a great time for their kid to come over to your house. I assume some people here would say that high schoolers need to work this out on their own, but if my child were the one that was “too busy” to make a contribution I would appreciate the head’s up.
Group work continues to be a problem for adults, too.
Love the call home phone idea. Wish I had thought of that.
If he has the same issue in college are you going to call the professor or the parents of his classmates?
He needs to do it and by being more assertive I mean he needs to get his partner to commit to a plan that allows them to meet the deadline and do equal shares. If his partner can’t commit to that then he needs to tell his partner that he’s going to contact the teacher and see if other arrangements can be made.
There is a bigger lesson to be learned here than 1 grade on a project.
A lot of this nonsense has been solved at the girls’ school by having group projects have individual grades. Each kid decides what part of the project they want to work on, confirm it with the teacher, and then if a particular kid decides to blow it off, that part of the Powerpoint or Preci is blank when they all do the presentation.
You can suggest this to the teacher, they may or may not go for it. Another thing you can do is shoot the video yourself and make it very clear that the other kid had nothing to do with it, that it was obviously a solo-shot video. If the teacher asks about it say “I did the best with what I had. He chose not to participate.” Like seriously make it ridiculously obvious that you did the entire thing yourself.
The kids that are crap at group projects get reputations, btw, and everyone sees the blank powerpoint sections with X’s name at the top. Those kids end up getting rejected from groups in the future, so it tends to work itself out well. Unless you’re X. Then you’re screwed.
Based on my daughter’s experience, video projects (her forte) aren’t set up for people doing specific parts.
But how about: “Dude, my parents are freaking out. They are ready to call your parents or the teacher because they think you aren’t pulling your weight.”
My daughter had this problem throughout her entire school life. Her last semester in college - all the homework for her computer class was done in pairs and she had 4 different partners but yet did every last line of computer code herself for every single homework. That class did allow her to speak with the TA if there were “partner problems” and she did do that for one of her bad partners (they shuffled partners a few times during the semester so this was possible.)
For her college accounting class she again had a group where nobody helped her for most of the semester. That teacher was wise and included a review sheet for each kid to grade the participation and efforts of their partners (my daughter also spoke to the teacher about her problem partners - in this case a group of 3 students and both of the others did nothing.) The teacher used these sheets to give different grades to the students on the same project - so although the project was an A the other kids might not have gotten an A because of their lack of participation.
I think my daughter has heard every excuse in the book - sick, busy, studying for other tests, etc. The last straw for her was the day that classes were cancelled and her group of four students had agreed to meet in the library at 10 am and she showed up and nobody else did. She was so frustrated that she did pass that information on to the teacher!
My eye still twitches in remembering my kids’ middle and high school group projects, but the teachers usually have a greater reason for creating these types of assignments. If our kids were having difficulty with project partners, they always talked with the group as a whole as they were usually not the only one frustrated, and that often took care of the issue. If it didn’t work, they’d ask the teacher, “We need your input. Would you give us some guidance on how to better work with X?” 99% of the time, the teacher was well aware of X and group projects, and would give some input. And, usually once the teacher was alerted, he/she would keep a closer eye on the group, and stop by their table to ask pointed questions if the team was working on the project in class. That usually always took care of the problem. What was really great is that with certain teachers once they were told of the issue, they were able to coach the group members who were involved in the project on how to be better project managers. Great life skill. There was one time nothing worked, and the teacher banned the kids who were working on the project from doing further work, and made the ones not working complete it on their own without any input. Fortunately, the kids who were working on it were graded on their own work.
You have my sympathy. No one in my family likes doing group projects because we all tend to be the ones pulling most of the weight.
Our high school no longer does group projects that have to be done outside of school. Any teacher requiring a group project has to factor this into in school time for the students.
There was way too much difficulty for students trying to arrange group time outside of school.
Ours is a regional district comprised of four towns. That is one reason. Another reason is that some kids went to see non-custodial parents on weekends.
I did a happy dance when they discontinued these group projects.
Parents should not be calling other parents in HS about homework. The kids are old enough to figure this out on their own. As someone said above, there are bigger lessons to be learned. I like some of the other advice – blaming parents, enlisting teacher, etc.
DS said he spoke to his teacher today. He mentioned that his partner was too busy to work on the project this weekend. His teacher’s response, " So are you going to complete the project by yourself?" Well, at least she knows he’s doing most of the work.
Arrrh…My son has just had a physics group project assigned. It’s due Friday. He and his partner are graduating seniors. They are both extremely busy and I can already tell only one person will be doing the work. I just don’t understand why teachers continue to assign these group projects. What’s the lesson? Stop your own work to allow the other guy to catch up?
Anytime I have lazy partners for a group project we assign parts (because our teachers want equal work) and then the night before if they haven’t done anything I do their part but I write in a way so I can understand it and then during the presentation I like to watch them stumble over their words and not know what they are say. Then since they usually mess up I correct them which lets the teacher know I had to do all the work. It makes my day a little better to see people who coast through get called out for it.