One of my students today had a hard time finding a partner. He wandered around trying to find one and, because the class has an odd number of students, ended up by himself. When I finally assigned him a group, everyone laughed at the student who would be his partner.

I also may have made a mistake.

What’s odd about what happened today is that I had just explained that 1) this was a major project and 2) because it was major everyone needed to choose their partner carefully because 3) both partners would receive the same score. If one was good and one was bad, they’d both get the bad score.

What’s really odd is that the guy who couldn’t get a partner is one of my best students. Usually, it’s the bad students who can’t get partners and they end up in pairs with other bad students or made to participate in forced partnerships at my request/angry insistence.

This student is also a hard worker and it will be easy for his partners to be lazy whilst they only pretend to be busy. He also tends to dominate the speaking parts, which also makes it easier for his partners. Also, with three partners, each partner has less to memorize.

The rest of the class was unimpressed.

Part of the problem, and I realize this is ugly, is that the good student has an air of “kick me” about him. He is skinny and has slightly bushy hair and he reminds me of a fellow student who used to get bullied back in my Hayden, Colorado days. That student also gave off a “kick me” vibe that many people were more than happy to exploit.

I’m hoping that the problem really is that this student tends to volunteer to go first when I ask for volunteers. This usually produces angry reactions from his partners, even when I point out they get bonus points for going early.

My mistake, though, may have been choosing the pair at random and then letting randomness make the choice. The good student is now with one of my worst students–who 1) plays American style football; 2) happens to be almost as tall as I am and 3) is one of a handful of students I believe should never have been allowed into the high school. He’s never going to take the assignment seriously (he tends to try to improvise by putting on a comedy routine) and I’m afraid the last laugh will be on my good student.

In the end, I’ll probably have to let the good student work by himself and watch the other guy and his partner fail. That said, the third partner was absent today. I’ll have to see his reaction before I make any decisions.