Teachers: Everyone is Not A Group Player

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Teachers need to understand that group assignments can cause incredible stress on some students. Not all respond positively to group assignments and those students deserve some choice in their learning styles. There are many reasons students can hate group assignments ranging from the dread of trying to get "picked" for a team to the stress of not being graded on your own work. Students who resist group work may find it so stressful that they quit and/or disengage. Teachers need to be aware that group assignments are not a one-size-fits-all situation for the wide range of temperaments present in students.

With so many kids dropping out of school, committing suicide and/or moving to home schooling due solely to peer bullying and social pressures in schools, it is irresponsible to not listen when students try to explain why they are withdrawing. I was a high school drop-out and I did not get a chance to attend college until I was almost 30 and a single mother. As a graduate student now at age 52, I still find the hardest part of school to be the mandatory socialization aspect. The academics themselves are never the hurdle for me: the hurdle at schools for me is ALWAYS the social interactions. What I am saying is teachers are alienating a lot of students due to a forced social domestication into a narrow mainstream funnel (where it is assumed we all must live or want to live). All such forced socialization does is make those of us who felt left out, leave, or quit school. I am sure a large percentage of people who quit school do so due to socialization reasons, which should be a blight to the institution of academia itself in my opinion.

Personally, I can give you a long list of reasons why I hate being forced to work in groups in academic settings, as could many of my peers. So who benefits from mandatory group assignments? My first thought is perhaps lazy teachers prefer group assignments since they end up then grading only one assignment for many students, reducing their workload. But perhaps it is not so malicious. Does anyone else benefit from mandatory group assignments? Studies do show there is a benefit to mixing different skill levels together in academia, primarily for the benefit of the lower achieving students. For me, that feels like teachers are now using the higher level students to do their work for them with the lower level students. I always resented being placed in group assignments, even in grade school, to basically be a free tutor for the lower achieving kids. How have group assignments benefitted me as a student? The only group assignment that ever benefitted me in over 40 years of schooling is one that taught me why group assignments do not work.

In 1976, I had a brilliant teacher named Mr. Ramirez, who taught an introduction to psychology class at an alternative high school (School Within A School or SWAS), which held classes within the normal school buildings at Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, CA. Mr. Ramirez assigned the class to about 6 groups of students. One group was made to stand in the hall and wait until they were called back into the classroom. Those of us inside were told what was going on but those in the hall were not told what was happening. We inside were put into groups and a leader was assigned within each working group. We were told to work together to make a paper airplane which we would then fly in a paper airplane contest outside later. The crux of this assignment was the people outside had to come in and observe our groups working and try to determine who the assigned leader of the group was. In this setting, I waited and waited as time ticked by, with the general cordialities people play through not wanting to dominate others. We had ½ hour to make this plane and by 20 minutes into it, all that had happened in my group was this bizarre dancing around on ice to not step on anyone else's toes by proposing an action to take. Finally, out of sheer impatience and frustration, I took over. I said we needed to come up with a strategy of action NOW. Not later, now. And I set it up so either someone proposed something or I would just start moving forward and take anyone who would join me with me. I ended up saying we were going to make a certain type of plane unless someone else has any ideas and no one did. Needless to say, in the end, the outside observers determined I was the assigned group leader, but I was not. The purpose of this assignment was to show us that some people are leaders and some are followers and it did not matter if you even assigned them different roles, they will relegate back to their organic roles regardless of assignments. Honestly, due to that experiment, I understand a lot of why I hate group work. It puts me in a position of asserting leadership, even reluctantly, quite often, when put into a group of natural followers. I would rather just lead myself, and those other people can lead themselves. Actually, it would behoove followers to learn how to lead themselves a bit better, in my opinion. I do not think we have a glut of leaders in American society: we have a glut of followers. If anything, people need to learn how to work independently more, not how to follow more in groups. For people like me, the incredible amount of energy needed in negotiating leaders and followers in group activities takes away from time that could be spent on solid academics.

Since the power dynamics of groups tend to always resort to the natural leaders and followers situation, regardless of assigned leadership, groups cannot be useful to people like me unless this power dynamic is addressed and neutralized. In my opinion the best way to neutralize it would be for intense teacher oversight aka a teacher acting as an umpire. Yet I get the idea that teachers use group assignments to have less work, not more work, and if teachers were dragged into the social power dynamics of group assignments of each group, it would mean more work, not less, thus I think group assignments would have less appeal to teachers if they were required to be active umpires for all groups. But that burden is shifted to the students in group work. I am personally tired of being rented out as a free tutor in group assignments throughout my schooling, rather than me being given mentors who inspired me to greater heights. I also think it is arrogant for teachers to assume they understand the group popularity dynamics going on in classroom settings. Look, *someone* is going to have to be in groups with the bullies of the class. To force students, especially children, into unnatural groupings can actually be dangerous to a child's mental health.

The cruelest thing a teacher can do is force a kid who is not well liked to have to "find" a group to work with in class. It is a form of Rudolph's notorious "reindeer games" situation, where he is always left out. I petition all teachers to ASSIGN GROUPS at ALL TIMES, for the protection of the weakest in class. To force kids to go begging group to taunting group, for someone to allow them onto a team is abuse, in my opinion. Teachers MUST assign team members to groups if they insist on group assignments, lest the least liked in class pay each and every time. If you want to turn a kid off to school, keep putting him/her in *that* situation. It has zero to do with academics yet is enough to turn a kid off to school entirely.

I was the fat red-haired kid no one wanted on their kickball team in grade school. And do you know how I reacted to that as a 10 year old girl? I grew to abhor P.E., and I relegated myself to being last picked and grew into the part. I stood back, totally uninterested, until all teams were picked and then I just walked to the team stuck with me without saying anything. I was teased for being fat when I ran, for being too slow, or jiggling fat, or whatever, and I finally gave up even trying. When my mandatory time would come for me to be "up," I would kick the ball and WALK to first base slow enough to be tagged out so I could sit out the rest of the game for the whole rotation of players until forced to go do it again. It would have been nice to lose weight playing kickball with friends and having fun in a welcoming environment but that was nowhere near the hostile, negative sports environment I faced in 5th grade P.E. class. From then on, I avoided P.E. class involvement whenever possible all the way through high school, due to the social aspects, not the physical requirements, of P.E.

Forced groups did not only ruin P.E. for me. Group assignments are still, at age 52 in grad school, the hardest part of any curriculum I face. Not only do groups enforce a sense of separateness and "otherness" for some, which is ironic, they also burden the students with stress over their grade being compromised by others' lack of work or understanding of the academics. How this plays out is the "A" students do all the work and carry the "C" students. This way, teachers and school administrators can say the "A" students "helped" the "C" students get better grades (free student tutoring) but in reality, all that happened was the "A" student DID THE WORK FOR the "C" student. Looks good on school grade records and school district reports but in reality, the "C" student did nothing and the "A" student did the "C" student's work, burdening the "A" student with the teacher's "C" student problems.

I was once partnered with another student in a college class to do a "team assignment." Though I asked my partner work with me for weeks on end, he kept promising to help but was missing in action. I built the project myself as he would not contribute a thing. Finally, the night before it was due, he showed up and wanted me to work with him to rearrange, edit, augment, etc. this project. By this time, it was too late for me to care. I had already done my work. I'd assumed he was a no show and did the entire assignment myself to save my own grade. Then he showed up in the last hour, the night before, not even the day before, it was due, and tried to enlist me in his last minute panic. I was not interested in that as I said. While his contributions did ultimately enhance the presentation, the way he did it made me question his work ethic and honestly, the only thing that came from that was a slight friction between me and him. Though we got an "A" on the project, I suffered a lot of headaches, stomachaches, stress and anxiety navigating something I could have much easier just done myself, while also not causing friction between me and a classmate.

When I was a law student (I am still in good standing) in my 30's, this dilemma of worrying about your grade suffering due to others played out yet again. We were assigned to groups and also had an assigned group leader and an assigned group secretary who was responsible for taking notes and then processing them into a paper on behalf of the group. I was the oldest, fattest, poorest and most alternative in lifestyle of the entire class. The rest of my group was a bunch of pampered, class-insulated rich kids in their 20's. The group was all male, as is usual in law school, with myself and one other 20 year old gal who was actively flirting with all the males in the group. I felt invisible. As we had to wait for all the males to spray some type of pheromone on the girl, who was the secretary, I sat, bored, waiting to get to the assignment. Finally, when we got to the assignment, the whole group began to focus in on the issue being a breach, when it was clear to me that the breach issue was a ploy to get us off track, and I kept trying to explain to them that to have a breach, there needs to be a contract, yet they refused to analyze the status of the contract, jumping to the breach analysis. I knew they were wrong. I went to the teacher as they cleverly crafted their argument as to the breach, against my advice, and I told the teacher my entire group was WRONG and I did not want my name put on their paper! My professor, Professor Warren Cohen, told me to turn in my own paper, and to not sign their group paper, which I did.

The next day, we were all handed copies of my group's work for all students in class to analyze. The professor asked the class if anyone knew what was wrong with the paper's conclusions. I knew exactly what was wrong with it, so I raised my hand. He called on me and I rattled off the exact same analysis I had told the group, about how there was never a contract to begin with as it was missing essential elements. The group glared at me as I said these things yet again, until the professor declared I was correct. I got an "A" on my assignment, they failed. After class, the group came to me and apologized saying they had "judged a book by its cover" and they were wrong. I do not understand what that means…that they judged that because I was poor, or old, or a woman, or fat, or dressed like a hippie in comfortable clothes, or was someone they were not sexually interested in, that they had a right to not listen to me? So they were apologizing for that, apparently, even though to this day I do not understand how their apology is not another insult. But in the end, I did become very good friends with the group leader over this event as he did have moral trepidations due to what happened.

When I first started law school, I asked several people if they wanted to be in study groups with me, as people were making study groups. No one wanted to be in a study group with me. After I got the 3rd highest grade in the class in Contracts, people began to want to study with me, but by then, I resented them and had no desire to just raise their grades with my hard work. I felt a bit like Henny Penny in the kids' story and by the time the only black man in our class asked to work with me, after I had asked to align with him a year prior, I had no interest. He had kissed up to the white jock boys for the past year, he could stay with that group as far as I was concerned. I was fine just doing the work myself, and it was not until I was invited to an elite group of high-achieving feminist law students that I found a study group I felt welcomed into and felt I actually had allies in law school. At this point in my academic career, the only way I can stand doing group assignments is to allow myself to turn in my own independent assignment with it, explaining where I do and do not agree with the group.

One of the main rationales used for group assignments in schools is that students will have to work in groups on the job in the real world. But I do not subscribe to the Industrial Age thinking of school as a training place for businesses and industry. I do not support the use of schools for governmental domestication or even mainstream socialization. That mindset has hurt too many students already. I subscribe to the transformative/social emancipation teaching theories, which give the students tools to critically assess authority and power, and which give students the tools to think for themselves, not just regurgitate governmental and industrial slogans and mainstream rhetoric. In the Information Age, workplaces that function like jails are becoming more rare, and I no longer have to be trained to get along with oppressive bosses, aggressive workplace gossip, or even groups! I can work alone from my computer for work, the same way I take internet classes now. Even forced group/social dynamics of the workplaces are changing. Schools should follow suit and start training students to be independent thinkers, who can work on their own, eliminating the wasted energies of power dynamics. So, I do not buy into this rationale that we must force students into uncomfortable social groupings for school assignments because they'll have to do that in the work environment later.

As I said earlier, it is ironic, but group assignments amplify "otherness" or separateness for certain individuals, especially the least popular or most "different" students. The mainstream, quite often a white, heterosexual, middle class contingency, acts as if their reality is *the only* reality, dominating the group dynamics. This endangers the most vulnerable students on many levels. My feeling is group assignments are great for popular kids who fit into the homogenous mainstream. But for the "other" kids, we suffer in silence, often emotionally detaching or physically withdrawing or even worse, moving into self-hatred or dropping out of school to stop the pain. As the immortal Dr. Frank Zappa wrote in one of his songs, "We are the other people, we are the other people…you're the other people too."

Recently, a friend of mine that I first met 30 years ago as a fellow street performer, visited with her 2 kids. One of her sons is a preteen and the other is in his mid-teens. They were both very smart, well-spoken, polite, artistic, respectful, hilarious, aware of culture and science and honestly, unusual in their individual and intellectual freedoms at such a young age. We were talking about how they are home schooled, as was my son part of the time (due solely to social reasons, yet again). Their mom said the social dynamics of school were way too stressful and ridiculous so she home schools them so they can be the lovely independent souls they are. She commented that one of her sons plays in the local school's band and her son quickly commented that was more than enough socialization for him. He implied just interacting with the group dynamics of a school band was enough of a hassle, reinforcing why they cut out the rest of the school socialization route. I laughed, and completely related to her son commenting that even the band tested his patience for people in group popularity contests. These kids are not anti-social by any means; they just do not fit into the very narrow confines of the mainstream.

Yes, we could work voraciously to get these kids properly socialized and ready to work in an oppressive work environment. They could be bullied by students and teachers to conform. There is still time to batter then into the mainstream. But why? As John Stewart Mill argued in his utilitarian argument, to try to achieve that mainstream cuts off genius at the top end. We still have time to beat conformist behavior into my friend's kids, but it is too late for me. I cannot be socialized into the massive white, middle class, heterosexual mainstream at this point. I have had a few good teachers who allowed me to study independently, which really is required for top students if classes are being dragged down to a mainstream mean. Through independent study, I learned how to think for myself. I learned I do not need someone else to tell me if something makes sense or not. I learned to assess politics and social behaviors myself. I learned to make my own free choices, free of social pressures. I learned to be a free thinker via schools, despite all efforts to force me down the tunnels of the mainstream masses.

I chose to study design in graduate school because you can do design alone. I work alone, always. Whether it be as a researcher, writer and publisher, or as a performer, or painter, or web designer, I always work alone. But now I am being confronted with a lot of this forced group assignment stuff again and my aversion to it at age 52 is as strong as my aversions to it as a kid. I wonder if group work is implicit in schooling. Is it possible to be a good student but to reject groupings? I understand that kids who do not socialize with school peers could be said to be the definition of those mass killers who shoot in schools, but my argument would be that forced socialization creates outcasts, and that is what causes those kids to snap, not the independence factor. Most of those kids say they were bullied and made to feel like outsiders long before they became violent and many of those shooter profiles also involve students who were considered very bright, thus exemplifying the problems I spoke of earlier. So, I ask again: is it possible to be a good student but to reject the groupings and ask for a choice to not participate in group assignments as a student? Do I need to drop out of my graduate program because I cannot handle the social pressures to work in groups even though I get all "A"'s on my assignments and have a 4.0 GPA? It shocks me that even in grad school, the biggest obstacle for me in school is not the academics, but the forced socialization.