Teaching children to advocate for themselves

I don't want to be handling my kids' stuff when they are adults, so when they enter middle school, I start handing over the responsibility keys to them.

This is a slow process and is somewhat dependent on the personality of the child. I can't do with G what I did with N. M has practically raised himself and is ahead of both his siblings despite being several years younger than each of them. 

Handing over the responsibility keys doesn't mean I throw the kids to the wolves. There are times when my kid doesn't know what's going on, and I need to insert myself into the process. 

But if it is a matter of questions about an assignment or something of that nature, I encourage my children to email their teachers themselves.

When they first learn to do this, I don't just say "Email your teacher" because they don't know what to say or how to say it or anything. They are still under the impression that adults know what they're doing. I try to gently disabuse them of this notion. 

Today, I had to help G advocate for himself.

He was assigned a group project yesterday (Friday) to be done and turned in on Tuesday. It is a long holiday weekend. 

Now I have issues with this assignment from the outset. An assignment over a holiday weekend is plain idiotic.

Also, group work at the start of the school year is usually dumb, especially if things aren't specifically laid out for kids like "Jane Doe is in charge of writing slide 1 and Bob Smith is in charge of slide 2."

(I know this from having assigned things without being very clear and specific about roles and responsibilities; I've learned from my own stupid mistakes.)

I asked G if he and his group had specific roles. He said no.

He said that two of his group mates weren't even at school on Friday and the other had to leave early to complete MAP testing. So G's group on Friday consisted of himself. 

G said he was just going to do the entire assignment, to which I responded, "No, you absolutely are not."

Maybe I'm just at the end of my rope with the pandemic "group assignment" in which some of us have done ALL the work to try to end it (vaccines, masks, social distancing, etc.) while others have done whatever the fuck they want, but I'm not about to agree to G doing an entire project so that the other four members of his group can get an A or a B or even a C on his back without contributing in the least. 

I tell students all.the.time when I sub that giving other people the answers is giving away their brain work for free. And it doesn't help the other person in any way, shape or form. 

So I watched as G wrote an email in which he explained the situation to his teacher and asked what she recommends he does. 

I'm hoping that he gets a reasonable answer back. If not, that's when I'll need to come into the picture and do some advocating.