As a general rule, it is never the students who are the cause of the academic problems of the world. For the most part, the world is full of students who are simply being treated poorly by their teachers. However, just as with everything else in the world, there are just those few students out there who are always going to prove to be a serious challenge, no matter how hard you may work to turn them into the honor students of your dreams. For these types of students, learning is so very rarely on the agenda. For these types of students, just getting out of a class by any means necessary is usually the shortest distance between one type of fun and the next. It is all too unfortunate that these students have often been attacked (in some cases physically) by people who are in positions of authority that they have no respect whatsoever for people who are trying to help them.
The first group is the type who have no interest whatsoever in doing anything which is not fun to do. In the cases of those types of people, no one has ever shown them that learning new things (aside from newer and more efficient ways to be a delinquent) has any sort of benefit to them. Granted, these students can potentially be helped, but it is going to take every nerve that you have in order to do so. And be prepared for them to give up on anything that is more than slightly challenging.
The other group of problem children is the group that simply do not care much about anything. While the previous group is usually used to chasing the latest thrilling activity, this at least shows that they are in touch with some kind of spirit that lives inside of them. This student, on the other hand, has basically just given up on everything in life. Often enough, these kids are just a hair trigger away from suicide, so tread very lightly with them. In this case, they don’t rebel- they just don’t care.