meirl

That is an element of teamwork, yes.

More often than not it’s just overworked teachers that simply do not have the time to grade individual assignments for everything in a class. So they end up having to make one or two group projects throughout a term, so they can catch up on grading the individual assignments.

I’m a teacher and this is true. Students in high school often have an impossibly hard time work with folks who aren’t already their friends, but they need to learn the soft skills of how to do so

You know, I’ve had success every time I’ve talked to my coworkers one on one about their work ethic.

One would show up late every Sunday when it was just three of us (usually we have about 12) and Sundays were the heaviest day. You can barely work with two people, and sometimes it’s just not enough. You need lots of strength. So one day after he arrived and immediately went to smoke and chit chat I pulled him aside and in a rather passive, non confrontational way, told him how disrespectful it was to the both of us, and how I would appreciate it if he would consider trying harder getting there on time so we could get the help we so obviously needed. He showed up before us that next Sunday, starting work by himself.

Another would chill outside of our work area often, and a couple times I called on him to come help us, and I think he respected me for doing so given that I was straight forward without a hint of disdain in my voice. There he’d go joining in.

Another got cold after I spoke with him about trying to help maneuver our work to the line where it belongs (we only have about a foot of wiggle room and it affects a lot when he would just let go and walk away from a giant moving can, leaving it up to one person to keep them from knocking into and moving others, and pushing/pulling it back to the line). But he started staying with it and making sure it was done right, and I make a point to be amicable towards him so as to help him feel less … “attacked”. It’s nothing personal. He ultimately didn’t keep it up, but it was awhile before he reverted back to his old ways.

I think you can get far being gentle and straightforward with people. I kinda get a thrill out of challenging myself to breach potentially controversial topics like that, with the intention to actually (hopefully) be productive in doing so.

Honestly, group projects should come with a survival guide for handling this

I never thought about it that way, this is very…insightful.

Fr

its so that teachers have less things to grade

ITT people in the comments who don’t get the joke

Ah yes, doing most of the work and getting thrown under the bus.

True.

Oh shit… I never learned that lesson…

No they were meant to cut down the pile of shit to grade by 3/4.

Fun little anecdote regarding that subject matter:

I went back to school during the pandemic after being in the work force for 21 years. I had a group project that I was supposed to do. I requested to do my project alone, because I felt like I wouldn’t have similar points of view with all the much younger people in my class. I was denied. I set up times to work with my assigned partner immediately, and she changed the date because she was busy with other things. Then that date came up, and she was too busy and changed it again. I reported this to the teacher and the teacher did nothing. She kept on delaying to the night before the presentation and finally did it. It didn’t really go well.

I emailed the department head, who had taken note to my excellence in the subject matter (96-100% final grade in all classes in the subject, even the accelerated summer course, which had a year’s worth of classes compressed into 12 weeks), and explained my situation, but with a twist.

I said that I explicitly requested to do the project alone and was denied. I tried multiple times to get the other person to work on the project with me, but she kept bailing on me. I understand that sometimes teachers will defend group projects by saying “well, in the real working world, you have to work with others,” but in my 21 years in the real working world there was not a single task I’ve ever been responsible for that if someone was impeding me, I couldn’t just exclude the dead weight and take all of the load myself. Yes, it’s more work and it sucks, but you know it gets done right, then. The department head didn’t disagree with me and my resulting grade was based off my contribution alone because of this. I got a 95% on the project that I had very little time to prepare for.

Documentation, communication, and diligence are also part of being assigned a task you’re responsible for.

> tfw my coworkers are skilled and competent af cause they’re hired on merit unlike public school classmates