I’d let it go - I think that your son’s instincts are spot-on. If questioned about it, tell the truth, otherwise don’t say anything about how much effort the friend put in. It will only make things tense and uncomfortable, especially if you get the friend’s parents involved. In the future your son will know either not to work with him, or else to expect to do all the work.
On the upside, the teacher may very well figure it out on their own. International Marketing in college required a semester-long group project - thoroughly research all aspects of a third world country, choose or create a product to market there, and create an entire business plan for selling it (right down to finding real companies for your suppliers, finding a location for your store if applicable, etc.). Culminates in a 100+ page paper and 15 minute presentation, plus smaller presentations and such along the way.
There were three people in the group, including me. I ended up choosing what we were selling, writing the entire paper, and doing 75% of every presentation (since I was the one who knew the material we were presenting on). I never went to the teacher or deliberately gave any indication that the work was all mine. However, I was the only one who could answer any questions, and at least one night she spotted me waiting for my group members in the Business building. (One eventually showed). I got an A for the project and the course. The other two most definitely did not.
I’m 37. Dunno what that does to your theory, sunacres.
For the record, my parents never tried to get me special treatment from my teachers and they aren’t the type to assault anybody. Nor am I.
I don’t see why it’s wrong for a parent to step in sometimes. Seems to me that that’s part of the job description. Telling an 11 year old “Some people cheat. Suck it up and deal”, especially when it’s directly impacting them, doesn’t sound right to me.
Sometimes, of course. It’s the choice of times, and the situation in the OP isn’t one of them. It’s not “suck it up and deal,” it’s “hmm, how are you going to deal with this?” There’s a difference.
Sorry about the blown theory. I went to school with Jerry Mathers, so I tend to relate a lot of life experience to his TV character.
I had a similar situation in college. It was a programming project; very easy, all we had to do was create a program to perform a mathemathical algorithm the teacher gave us (the hard part of programming is the logical analysis and listing of the steps, which in this case was already done). Luck of the draw, I got two… snake-enchanters. In a teen movie, they would have gotten the roles of Idiot Almost Twin Popular Girls.
I did all the programming; the teacher, JJ, knew it perfectly well. The TA knew I’d been at the lab, typing the program in and checking it and prettyfying it, while they were in the cafeteria playing cards. When we had to write the report, I got Mz Perfect and Mz Princess to write it. They pouted, I said “hey, I’m not doing it, and if JJ wants to know why, I’ve got no problem giving my report verbally. Can you two explain the logic behind the program? No? Well, gee, I can.” Comes the final grade, the two little bitches get B+ and I get “see the professor”.
JJ accused me of cheating because he knew I’d done all the work and “there’s no way a girl who doesn’t even own a computer can be a better programmer than the other 11 groups who got this algorythm.” Emphasis his… desire to punch his beardless face in mine.
I’d let it go, except to ensure that your son has completely understood the true lesson: group projects are to be avoided at any cost. Begin teaching him now of all the ways to avoid working in a group: try to be the odd man out, and then cheerfully offer to do the project on your own; fake sick the day partners are to be chosen, and the next day, cheerfully offer to do the project on your own; pretend to have a bad cold, claim that you don’t want to infect partners, and cheerfully offer to do the project on your own; invent “personal reasons” (perhaps an ill parent), that prevent you from getting together with partners after school, but cheerfully – and gamely – offer to do the project on your own.
These are skills he’ll need for the rest of his life.
My blood pressure shot up to about 1000/900 and I told him, with lots of periods, that since he had an unused desk in his office, he could give me another algorythm and I’d work it out at that unused desk with him there, then type it in with someone watching, and by my cojones it would work on the effing first try except for eventual typographic sintax errors, same as the original program had. My paragraph ended with the sentence “No hay”, meaning “bet you don’t have the balls.”
He didn’t, so he gave me a C. Which isn’t at all what I deserved, but since that course wasn’t even part of our GPA (it was 3rd year, GPA takes into account 4th, 5th and Project) I figured it wasn’t worth requesting an audience with God (aka the Director).
In undergrad, I was part of a three-man team for a software development course, and one guy was just worthless. His part was always late and nonfunctional, and we ended up either doing it ourselves so we could move on, or having to rewrite it. After a while, we just stopped asking him to do anything, and he stopped offering. He must have missed the part of the syllabus that mentioned the presentations of our project we were going to do, since he didn’t show up. The powerpoint slide was easily edited to remove his name from the cover slide, and the project was turned in without his name on it.
I hear he dropped the course and failed out not long afterward. Good riddance.
In 8th grade, I had a group project for Earth Science class. They were trying to teach us to work well in groups, and the teacher decided to assign one over-achiever, one guy (there were way more girls than guys in the class), one artsy-type, and one something-else-I-can’t-remember to each group. I was the over-achiever. And, of course, guess what happened? The rest of the group contributed nothing. My mother watched me do the project by myself. She wanted to complain to the teacher; I told her no. I did not want any negative social consequences; you know how that is in 8th grade. She complained anyway; nothing came of it academically, but I was furious with her.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say anything to the teacher- chances are, your son will resent you for it. He’ll learn soon enough to beg to be able to do projects individually.
The project got an A (and my son told me that his teacher said everyone who “worked hard” on his/her project would get an A).
I consulted my sister, who is on the education faculty at a university, and she said that any teacher who assigns group work needs to either build in a component whereby each participant evalautes his/her contribution or figure out some other means for determining just who did what.
So part of me wants to deliver to this teacher on the last day of the school year a letter that says something like:
Dear Mrs. Blah,
It’s water under the bridge now, but I thought you might be interested in knowing that my son did 100% of the work on the science fair project for which it would appear that both he and his partner received the grade of A. My son’s partner is a great kid. I don’t think this was a case of one student being a slacker, but rather of two students not understanding how they could be equal partners.
Group work is something that we all deal with throughout our lives. My son perhaps has learned the lesson that, when a grade is at stake, you do what you need to do. However, I’m not sure what my son’s partner learned.
If the point of pairing students is to teach collaboration, then you might want to consider exploring with pairs at the outset how they might divide the work according to the skills and strengths of each. Likewise, you may want to consider some way to allow each student to assess his/her contribution to the project.
I think this might make for a more fulfiling educational experience for everyone.
Sincerely…
Dopers, whaddya think? I could just as easily let it go.
Better yet, have everyone evaluate every member of the group, including themselves. That way the guy can’t just give himself a glowing evaluation. This thread’s been reminding me of a project from grade 8 English where we were asked to do this at the end, giving everyone in the group a mark out of 10. Out of our group of four, one member did pretty much nothing. The highest mark he got on any evaluation was a 3–and that wasn’t even from him. He gave himself a 1 (if nothing else he was honest).
For younger kids, I don’t think it works well - the overwhelming urge is to give your buddy a good evaluation.
Either, have the kids come up with a project plan with a division of labor and then talk to them about how that worked out for them (and its ok to switch it around “Tyler’s grandfather died, so I ended up doing all the research, and he painted the box and helped me put together the exhibit” is a fine answer). Or make each child responsibile for answering a few questions independantly on the project - the other kid may not have worked, but he’ll have needed to mater the material.
Leave it alone already. Your son got a great mark, and he learned extremely valuable life lessons – not everything’s fair, not everybody’s willing to pull their weight, you shouldn’t ever blindly rely on other people, and you have to plan ahead so that you can take up the slack if necessary. This happens to everybody. It certainly happened to me more than once when I was in school, and I live these situations (or variations of) every single day at work. Your son’s skill, energy, intelligence and diplomacy will ultimately be noticed and rewarded.
The desire to give a good evaluation is not limited to younger kids. I struggled with it this past semester in college. One woman just did not seem to get the idea of how her part of the project needed to be done. However, she was just so pitiful all semester nobody had the heart to confront her and we just let her go on. On the evaluation, I gave compliments and recommended extra points to all the team members except her. I left the comments section blank on her evaluation. Our instructors were aware of the situation and I’m sure they did not miss the implications. One other project team had a problem member who argued, missed meetings and generally pissed off her team members and wound up losing 25% of the total possible points for the project as a result of her team members’s evaluations. By the way, she was shocked at her team member’s evaluations.
I wouldn’t send the letter, but that is just my non-confrontational self speaking.
If you ran into the teacher at the grocery store and she asked for feedback on that assignment, then I’d tell her. Otherwise, no. If she already had the skills to teach them about working together, she’d be doing it.
It’s not like this is the last ineffectual teacher your son will meet - save your energy for bigger fights.
I think it’s great that parents are much more involved in their children’s lives than my folks were in mine, but your interest in all of this is crossing over into the Need-to-Get-a-Life zone.
Now, I’d vote for let it drop for reasons other than those monstro gave. I’d vote to leave it alone because it is too late to change anything this year, and if the school year is almost up, the teacher has more immediate things to worry about than adjusting her science fair project technique. And because the concerned parent–who was legitimately concerned–didn’t contact the teacher before the project was turned in, and the kid got an A, I’d let it drop.
I would let it go if I were you. This is your son’s battle not yours. It is up to him if he wants to fight it or if he wants to let it go. Your son has learned a valuable lesson about how much group work sucks and why you might not want to work with friends.
