My DD10 is in a 5/6 GT classroom. DD is not one to embellish (unlike her younger sister) so I would guess that her accounts are fairly close to the truth. DD also fully acknowledges that she has perfectionism issues that make it difficult to work in groups. Over the past few weeks, I have been hearing comments from her that bother me. In some group interactions with male students, she feels that she is being pressured to take an unfair share of the work or is being excluded.
In her math group last week, she was grouped with two boys (one of them is at her level in math, not sure about the other). They sat there talking and goofing off while she did the work. When she refused to share her work, they told her that she was a bad partner. I asked how she handled it. She said that she gave in and told them how to tackle the problem because she needed them to proceed with the next phase of the assignment. She claimed that she made a decision not to fight them. She had basketball practice that night and didn't want the unfinished work as homework. She was angry because, in her words, "They just expected me to do the thinking for them."
In another situation, she had a group assignment on an ancient civilization. Her teacher told them that they would be graded separately on their slides but as a group on the presentation. They used google docs and DD would show me day after day that the one male in her group wasn't working on it. The only thing he did was change the background on a daily basis. This caused my DD a lot of stress as the presentation date got closer. The night before the presentation, the male partner threw together some sloppy work. DD worried the group presentation would suffer because of him. DD and her other female partner took over all of the work except the few slides specifically assigned to the male partner.
Finally, DD and her friend E got grouped with some boys from another class for a social studies project. The boys absolutely refused to talk to them and include them in their work. When I asked DD how she handled this one, she said that she just worked separately with E and ignored the boys. She said that it just wasn't worth the fight. I could tell that she was frustrated and hurt.
DD told me the other day that she wished she never had to have male partners. DD dismisses my suggestions as too confrontational, i.e. In the math situation, "Did you tell them that they were bad partners because they weren't doing any work?" She is uncomfortable talking to the male students. I've asked DD whether she has brought any of these situations to teacher and DD says, "No." When I have asked her why not, she gives me wishy-washy answers. I'm getting the impression that she is worried about being unpopular with the boys so she doesn't want to say anything. It's starting to drive me crazy that she is not advocating for herself. Any suggestions?
