Yearbook Groups Copy

Cindy Jackson, Westwind
West Henderson HS (Hendersonville, N.C.)

Up to the challenge

Walking into her civics/economics class in the fall semester, sophomore Tabatha Bishop expected the best. It was the day for groups in her class to present their imitations of the presidential debates, something that they had worked on every Friday for seven weeks.

After putting down her books, Bishop realized something was wrong.

“Our class was doing our debates in Frank Gerard’s class, but when it was time to get in front of the class, our group realized that we had forgotten our platform, meaning that we didn’t have our opinions on the issues that we were debating,” Bishop said. “It was really frustrating, trying to figure out what we were going to do for our project. In the end, Mr. (Frank) Gerard postponed our debates for 20 minutes so that we could call a parent to bring the information we needed.”

Working in the classroom on small group assignments gave students an opportunity to learn skills they would need when they started their careers. As Bishop found out, learning could depend on others and be responsible could have a down side.

Putting students in groups was one method teacher implemented to get their students interested in learning, but some students found group work to be difficult.

“In Mrs. (Teresa) Davis’ class, a friend and I were working on a project for the book October Sky,” freshman Natanie Mapes said. “We both had our differences about it, so we each did half of it, and then we turned it in together.”

Other students enjoyed the opportunity to meet new people.

“In my fashion merchandising class, I was working in a small group. Even though I did not know the people in my group very well at first, we ended up finishing our project and received an A for our efforts,” sophomore Brittany Cutshall said.