5.      The Do-Nothing – The Do-Nothing is good at converting oxygen to carbon dioxide in your room…but not much else.  She became a Do-Nothing for many reasons…one of them being that she doesn’t understand the material.  She doesn’t understand the material because she was passed to the next grade without mastering last year’s material.  In some cases, this scenario plays itself several times until the student is multiple grades below grade level.   What you can do:  The Do-Nothing has to experience success before she is going to begin trying again.  You need to arrange for her to experience success, then praise her for the success.  Call her parents and tell them that you are so proud of her for the great effort she showed on her project.  You then have to capitalize on the small victory by using it to motivate her.  Use her motivation to get her remediated through tutoring, study hall, study groups, Saturday School, Summer School, or any other way that you can think of.  I know…it’s going to be a pain.  The alternative is to let the Do-Nothing do what she does best (nothing) for a period of time, then punish her with a bad grade.  The result:  The student responds by doing nothing.

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