Reply to Your 9th grader teams up with a friend with a school project

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid just had a rough group project that probably will make his friendship with his BFF pretty rocky for a while. BFF is a type A, academic kid with parents who like to help with projects. DS is a smart kid who hates school and procrastinates, but gets stuff done well in the end. Not a good match. BFF ended up doing 90% of the project at home with his parents, doing each step before deadline and then presenting it to my kid as all done. It was pretty demoralizing to my kid, and must have made BFF feel like DS was a super slacker. Good times.[/quote]

It's amazing how you position your kid as a victim in this... [/quote]

I had the same thought! [/quote]

Really? Didn't mean to sound that way. BFF is an awesome, academic kid. I love him. He and my kid are a terrible fit for group projects because my kid works to deadline and BFF likes do work well ahead. They'd both be better served with partners who work in similar ways. It was indeed sad for my kid to find that his input wasn't needed on anything because BFF did it all before it was supposed to be done. That also isn't good group work behavior.[/quote]
The work is done. There is nothing to be upset about. I set deadlines way ahead for "kids" like yours at work, so it can be done on time, not at the last moment with no room for an error.[/quote]

Nope. "The work is done" is not the way you manage staff. If I assign two members of my staff to work together to produce a deliverable and they come up with a timeline and employee A does employee B's piece before employee B was due to submit his piece, employee A is a problem. Why? Because if I thought the best product would have been produced by assigning it to A only, I would have assigned it to A only. But some things are better when they have two different skill sets contributing. And so I assigned it to A and B. A should not do B's work before B can do it, and B should not be late and hold up A. This is what kids are learning! Both the over-controlling kids and the slacker kids and the kids somewhere in the middle. How to work in a team, and negotiate who does what and when. It is a problem for a kid not to do his share on time, and it is a problem for a kid to take control and not give others space to work. Both kids need to learn, or else they are going to be a pain in the ass in the workplace.[/quote]

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