The people who work and study the most are usually the ones who don’t like group projects. It’s very common for everyone to expect one person to do everything.

But one student decided to spice things up and give the whole class a plot twist.

Let’s read the whole story and see what he did.

Group project revenge

Background: I always loved my English classes as I was an avid reader, enjoyed creative writing, and it was always my easy A.

Except for my senior year, when I had the teacher that fit the trope of that teacher always flirting with the athletes in her class.

She’d ask them about their games/personal lives during class, let them distract her during assignments, but get annoyed seeing other students on their phones.

Not to mention letting them turn in work late for no reason, and somehow annoyed by the students actually interested in learning.

Other students even noticed this as well.

It had gotten to a point of me and some of the others dreading going to this class because of all the distractions and weird flirting.

Even as seniors when you expect people to slack off some, a lot of us were wanting to prepare for college courses next year, so still took it somewhat seriously.

The student athletes were honestly nice guys, but knew they could get away with murder, so milked it.

Then the teacher assigned an easy enough group project.

The Project: It was one of the first years in the 2010s that students started getting personal laptops, and we had to do a group PowerPoint presentation on a poem assigned by the teacher.

Stupidly easy rubric to follow where everyone basically had to present one slide, and we would be graded as a group for the overall presentation, with a requirement to answer three questions from the class afterwards.

Basically an easy A.

The teacher had a strategy.

Groups were assigned, and as the girl with the highest grade in the class, of course got put with the male athletes.

Fortunately we got a really good poem (I know why the caged bird sings), but planning went as expected for anyone who has been in this situation:

I created and shared the PowerPoint, assigned the topics, and order we would go in while they all just talked to each other and ignored the work.

She knew the teacher’s angle, but her teacher didn’t know hers.

I knew she put me with them to guarantee a good grade for everyone, so to spite her decided to take a limited approach. I created the intro and my slide, and did not touch anyone else’s, leaving them completely blank.

When she would tease, “are you letting her do all the work?” I laughed along with them.

The whole thing was well planned by her.

I even reminded my group the day before we presented to, “go in and add anything”, knowing if they at least looked at it, they would know they would be presenting a blank slide.

I knew I was risking my own grade, but had been accepted to college already and my GPA was fine, and if everything went as I thought it would, it would be worth it.

It got even better.

The Fall: Day of the presentations, the best thing happened.

She has an observer. From the admin office.

We usually see them in a class only one day a year, I could not have dreamed for a better situation.

I volunteered our group to go first, see the excitement in our teachers’ eyes, and the panic in the guys in my group.

They thought she would have just done everything by herself…

I presented the intro on the author’s history, and it is going really well. Class seems to be engaged in what I am saying, the observer is smiling.

Then I change the slide that is supposed to introduce the poem. It is blank.

I stand confidently to the side, saying nothing, while the rest of the mood in the room shifts.

They were blindsided.

The three guys fumble over their own words, having nothing to say, looking to each other in panic as they switch the slides and each one is blank.

They can’t explain the themes, significance, can’t even say what they liked about the poem.

One does a good job rephrasing some things I said, but that was it. The observer has their brows furrowed as they write notes, our teacher is white as a ghost.

She was unharmed, but some people were worried.

Victory: At the end is when the class is required to ask three questions, and I answer all after giving my group a chance to respond.

Our group has failed. Even with my efforts, we’re not getting anything above a D.

At the end of the presentation, our teacher tries pulling, “I don’t know if I gave you guys enough time to work on this project, we can push it back another day”…

And the second best thing happens: all the other groups eagerly say “we are ready, we can go!”.

Other students realized what she was doing.

Everyone has figured I tanked on purpose, and if you have done group presentations in class before, you know yours looks a lot better going after someone who just failed.

After one more group goes, doing a great collaborative effort, the observer says something quietly to our teacher and leaves.

It was clearly a special situation.

The rest of my group sits with their heads down embarrassed as the rest of the class presents. They know they messed up, one even apologized to me.

At the end of class she asks us to stay behind. I get told I will get an A, and the rest will be given a new assignment to make up the grade.

Things actually changed after that.

Aftermath: The rest of the year she really cracked down on her teaching and stopped flirting with the students, even when they tried messing around with her.

She had observers about 3-4 more times that year, and the next school year got downgraded from all upperclassmen courses to only teaching freshmen and remedial English.

Found out later on after the observer reported back, she was required to submit some lesson plans for review and they were abysmal, and some of the other observations did not go well either.

Everyone learned a lot from the experience, especially OP.

Nothing was a fireable offense, but since our school was considered competitive to work in, they decided to reward newer teachers with the more desired grade levels.

This was not my first time being assigned to a group to “help the grade” or “make sure the others behaved”, but it was my first time acting out on it.

It was 100% worth it and served as a reminder in college and even early in my career to not let others take credit for your work, and if they do, letting them fail looks worse on them than it does you.

Let’s see what Reddit had to say about this.

Awesome advice.

A reader shares some thoughts.

The poem deserved better.

A compliment.

It was, indeed, perfection.

Wow.

Another reader chimes in.

This person has a different take.

Poetic justice at its finest.

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