The fifth chapter of Fires in the Bathroom, by Kathleen Cushman, focused on the variation among students, and the grouping of students. One of my concerns on becoming a teachers is how to create a learning environment in which everyone can flourish, but where nobody feels alienated or lesser. As a result of this I have chosen to focus on the grouping aspect of the chapter and two parts in particular: letting students pick their own groups and the possibility of one student carrying the entire team.
I believe all students have experienced and grouping situation in which they were the "work horse" of the group, or they were paired with people with whom they could not possibly be productive with for whatever reason. As the teacher, developing a strong rubric that emphasizes the importance of equal participation among all team members is essential. Additionally, I am a strong believer in student led evaluations for the individual and the group, by keeping them private it will allow for the students to critique themselves and their team members honestly. Also, I like to believe that by allowing students to group themselves it will lead to a more friendly and productive team. In the chapter, this topic was discussed and it seems that the students generally agree, "Let us sometimes pick what group to work in" (pg. 94) and "You may not get along with your assigned group, so the work isn't always done well." (Diana, 94) However, there are people who think that by allowing this it will single out the less popular students, or even lead to groups of friends that would rather socialize than work. Personally, I have worked in both assigned and free-choice groups and I have noticed that in assigned groups the students will assign pieces of the project to each student and then work alone; to me, this is inefficient because the point of group activities is to socialize and work together to achieve a common product, not to work individually in attempt to patch together multiple same-themed projects.
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