Throughout my entire academic life, I have simply dreaded group projects and regarded them as one of the worst punishments a teacher could possibly give. And I am not alone in voicing these thoughts, as this seems to be the consensus among BHSEC students. Here at BHSEC I have been truly spared much of the labor-intensive projects that schools like Beacon put so much emphasis on and happily rejoice at that. However, there is also something that I seem to be missing, something BHSEC is missing as well.

The types of group work ranges from huge research projects, in which we must create a power-point presentation, read many documents, and write copious analyses, to smaller projects, where we form a group for a single second to figure out a question on the board. However, the bigger ones are given for a reason.

The huge projects require not only cooperation from all of the group members, but also the tolerance and people skills. It is this team building aspect of group projects that teachers love so much, yet it is exactly what leaves their students in despair. Working together is so much harder then everyone makes it out to be and the group that is able to stay together is the only one that actually accomplishes anything. Group projects build these skills of collaboration and partnership, but it is only through continuous projects that we are truly able to learn anything.

So far at BHSEC I have only been assigned three huge group projects in which presentation to the class was mandatory. I learned about working with other students, but I lost any ability to create a successful project involving a group of people. Of course, this is all inside school. I was having an adept conversation with one of my teachers, who remarked that students are able to work together outside of school, but not as well inside of it. It dawned on me that this was true and the way we handle school is the complete opposite from our, shall I say, extracurricular lives. It is these group projects that meld our social and academic lives together. This is the combination that we all despise.
The smaller group projects are to everyone’s liking because we can converse with each other, but don’t have to incorporate schoolwork into our personal lives. It is difficult for these two worlds to collide. Thus big group projects are a result our many fears. Firstly, some students get stuck with all the work. Secondly, and most terrifying, we find ourselves in a blender with school and the world we live outside of it as the major smoothie ingredients.

However, it is important for these worlds to crash because it is another skill we must learn, accept and understand. The group work we do gives us the breadth to come together and deal with scholarly and social interaction. BHSEC is a combination of high school and college, but it should also remember the importance of working together. Although I am not and will not pressurize teachers to assign more group work, we need to be aware that the rest of the world is based on our interaction with other people. That said, if teachers were to assign more group work, students would have to learn how to delegate and how to step up to the plate so no one person has to do the work for the entire group, with a fraction of the credit.