Slothful Students

Wow, it seems like this is a never ending battle with one of my students. Today he was moved from one class to another--a "higher achiever" class. He is definitely not a higher achiever--just a discouraged young man. His attitude is "I don't care" which has never changed from the day he arrived at our school almost 2 years ago. How do we, as a nation, continue with children with this type of attitude. I thought maybe he might have been "molested", beaten, or badly humiliated as a young man and now we, as teachers, have to deal with his ATTITUDE. My only solution is to have him go to Mrs. Jacobs' 1st grade classroom and have him do work--music. My problem, other students in his "red" group decided to have the "I don't care" attitude; so therefore, I decided to give them all "f". All they had to do is to come up with a different rhythm for calypso; but they didn't. All the other students in their groups came up with a really neat rhythm except this group who has that child in it. This class is usually a fun class to have come into music; but now it has become the class from H----!! (Heck???) I have decided to have the "New/Old" student go to Mrs. Jacobs for 17 more weeks and work on a "packet". He will NEVER work on that packet--I know this from previous experience. How do I become "Christ-Like" and deal with him??? Just a rhetorical question...ok if you have an answer, let me know. The assistant principal has talked to him on several occasions and he has come in and apologized; but then it happens again and again. I know that I need to pick my battles with him--so I have tried to work around some of his obnoxious ways. I always decide that there comes a time that I have to take a stand and say, "I don't have to put-up with this nonsense; therefore, you cannot come back into my class." Problem is, he can get other students "going" and they will become like him. That is the situation in the "high achiever" class. Some decided to take on the same attitude; so I decided to follow through with my promise. I have always said, "if you don't want to do what we are doing in music class, then you can go to Mrs. Jacobs' and do paper and pencil there. Now of course you realize that she teaches 1ST GRADE." Nobody in their right mind would like to do this except certain students who don't want to do fun work in music. As the teacher was leaving with her class, I told her that he was a candidate for prison--she said that she didn't believe me. Is he??? She later on told me that since she and he were on an "ok" basis in the classroom, she wasn't going to chew him out for his behavior. She wanted to be the "nice" teacher. I think this is only the "honeymoon" period with her and she will have a rude awakening when he finally decides to be "himself" a person who refuses to do anything and is a person who defies authority.