At Risk Prompt

After reading Brittany BAP's response to my orignal post regarding At Risk students in the classroom. I have decided that I would like to focus more on students that she labeled as " Optionally Defiant Students." This mentality is such a foriegn cocnept to me and I think that by researching and observing students like these, I will have many of my own beliefs regarding schooling challenged. I am definitely up for it!
I think that I am still interested in students that are considered At Risk because of the outside factors in their lives- mainly because I assume (maybe wrongly) that these two catagories overlap. Perhaps I will discover that they do not overlap, but that is my hypothesis. I think that it is always a challenge to try to engage students in a class and as it was suggested, it helps if we make lessons applicable and intersting to their lives. However, I wonder if this is always possible? I think I will need to get out of my box for this one!!