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Friday, June 22, 2018

Scholastic Spotlight: Emily Plutowski


Author: Emily Plutowski
11th Grade
Educator: Rebecca Johnson
Minto

            I had to adjust my round glasses on my face. Oh, that’s just perfect! The teacher had announced our next science assignment, and I was not thrilled about it in the least. It was a team-based project, and I got grouped with the two other people--Tom and Hazel. They hardly understood Newton's law of motion. I will probably end up doing the whole project myself.
            When the teacher finished talking, he told us to discuss within our groups. I was comfortable where I was so I waited for my classmates to come to me. I watched them as they both grunted and gathered up their books and trudged over to me. Tom plopped down in his seat as Hazel sat down and looked at me expectantly. They didn’t say anything about the project even though we had a worksheet to fill out, so that's what I worked on to avoid any conversation with them.
            Eventually, they both moved on and started talking to each other about things that did not have to do with the project at all. They’re not even helping. I was very frustrated. I tugged at my short hair, and let out a forceful sigh. Tom and Hazel glanced in my direction.
            “Nathen, are we supposed to fill out these worksheets?” Hazel questioned. I looked up but avoided any eye contact with either of them.
            “Yes, but only one needs to be turned in.”
            “Do you need help with that one?” Tom asked looking right at me.
            “No, I’m almost finished anyway.”
            “Are you sure?” Hazel asked.
            “Yeah.”
At this point, I realized that I had the opportunity, in the beginning, to have them work with me, but I was stuck in the thought that they would not help me that I didn’t even ask. It was too late then because I had already finished the worksheet all by myself. Silently, I walked up to the front of the room to hand it in.
“Are you helping include everyone in your group?” The teacher had asked me when I gave it to him.
“Yep.” I quickly nodded my head and walked away as swiftly as I could. The truth is that I hadn’t. When I came back to my seat, I listened to what Tom and Hazel were saying.
“So, I thought we should appoint a team captain,” Hazel said turning to face me. “I mean, we are going to be working on this project for a while and we when we have nothing to do, we should have someone to look to. Right?” She looked at Tom and me.
“Yeah, that sounds good. Who wants to be it?” Tom replied.
“Well, the most logical choice would be the smartest person in the group,” Hazel stated as both of them looked at me.
“Me?” I questioned them.
“Yeah, you’re smart man. Why not.” Tom agreed slightly pushing my shoulder.
I reluctantly said yes to them, and that’s when our whole team went downhill. We came up with what we wanted our final project to look like, but the thing was that the project needed to include our hypothesis, our experiments, and finally our conclusion in an oral presentation. Over the next few days of our assignment, Tom and Hazel regularly came to me asking several questions about how to go about doing the experiments. Time after time I was not a “leader” as I should have been, but a control freak. I took over their portions of the project instead of explaining to them how it’s was to be done.
“Hey, Tom? How should I position the pulleys to help lift this heavy weight?” Hazel had said on one of the days.
“Uh… I don’t know. Nathan, can you help us? We don’t understand.” Tom asked me.
“Here, let me do it.” I started to fix the pulleys as we had learned in class and then showed them how much easier it was to lift the weight.
“Cool, now how do we measure how the weight was distributed? I have the paper to write it down right here.”  Hazel said holding up a grid sheet.
“Here, I’ll do it.” I took the paper and started to fill out the data without even consulting Hazel or Tom.
Two days later was our turn to present, we all walked to the front of the room, and the teacher got out his grading sheet for marking off points. Tom and Hazel looked at one another nervously for a bit while I stood between them.
“Your presentation will be graded on the quality of your work as well as participation. You may begin.”
I started us off and described what our project was and how we went about to do it. When it came to the point of Tom’s “assigned” job of the experiments, he was supposed to explain the methods of the pulley systems that we used to lift heavier objects.
“Um… Yeah, so we put the pulley here and here and Yeah-” I immediately cut Tom off, knowing he didn’t fully understand the correct terms and proper ways to present. I then started to do Hazel’s “assigned” part too. It’s not like she knows any more than Tom does about our project.
I found myself talking for the remainder of the time, and Tom and Hazel got about five seconds of talking, tops. Afterward, the teacher asked to see our group so that she could speak with us.
“Nathan it seems like you took over the entire presentation and I don’t think you realize that this was a group effort. You didn’t give any time for Tom or Hazel to speak on their participation in the project. As a result, Tom and Hazel are getting docked points, as are you. Hopefully next time you can help include other team members.”
I looked at Tom and Hazel’s downtrodden faces; they didn’t retort back saying it was unfair, they didn’t chastise me for being a complete control freak, they just walked back to their seats and stayed silent. I didn’t realize then, but I do now that being a leader sometimes means letting others do things for you. It means being part of the team, and from the very start, the team leader shouldn't have been me. Being the smartest doesn’t mean you are the best choice to lead.

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