“Why do we need to know this?” “I don’t see when I will ever use this in real life.” “If it’s not fun, I’m not going to do it.” [Elaborate groan] “It’s soooo hard!” These are the sorts of phrases I used to hear in my 7th grade classroom from my base rebel, phase persister daily. If I wasn’t careful, he would dig his heels in and sit in distress for the rest of the day. In fact, there were two major instances this school year where Mr. My-Opinion-is-it-must-be-fun put up the barricade and sat with his arms folded, unwilling to participate. The first occasion was during math. The student would put his head on the desk, roll on the floor, talk, and argue about the validity of math each day. First, I would try to reach him with either the emotive or requestive channels, asking about opinions:

   "Dude, seriously, this does suck!”
   “Bro, this problem isn’t going to solve...