Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Cannot Cooperate Aisha is known as a responsible and smart student. I have known her for the last two years, but this year is the first time she is taking one of my classes. She is in my 10th grade US History class. Recently, I started using small group projects in my class. I simply want my students to learn to cooperate, exchange ideas, and produce the project together. Although Aisha is willing to take part in these small group projects, she does not want to be in groups with male students because of her religious beliefs. When she told me about this, I told her that she was in the United States and that she had to work with whoever she is in a group with. In the first group project, Aisha was in a group with three males and one female students. She simply did not participate in any of the group activities. I wonder if should reconsider my original position on this issue and accommodate Aisha by having her work only with girls. Would I be doing her a disservice? What should I do? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) Cultural beliefs, religious beliefs are some of the things a teacher should respect and try not to delve into even if it does not make any sense to the teacher himself as this part of diversity. I f she is not willing to work with males, there is no point placing her with these students because she is not going to gain anything from the activity so the activity as far as she is concerned is pointless. We cannot give all the students in the class the accommodations they want but we can pick out the ones that are very important to the students and the ones which they are not likely to budge.