The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

I hear ya MsA. I teach too, and those kids have got it all! Senioritis, learned helplessness, and -- my favorite -- that lovely sense of entitlement.

"But... but... but I signed up for the lowest level physics class so I'd have an A on my transcript! How can I have a B? I supposed to just have an A!!"

Kids.

I struggled with Dyslexia in Elementary school (almost being held behind) but once I got over that hurdle I had no issues whatsoever. It seemed like all I had to do was show up and I'd have A's or B's. Being lazy and distracted at the time, there's only a few classes I remember clearly, so it's entirely possible my school was suffering from some serious grade inflation.

Of course, now our schools are over-tested, which I suppose is supposed to promote mastery, but in practice often leads to 'teaching to the test.' That's another can of worms.

While student teaching, I noticed many students who did get bad grades just didn't even care. Some of them laughed about it. Then progress reports would go out and we'd hear from some parents who'd start off angry, then vehemently assure us that their child would be doing better, and then most likely nothing changed.

Even if we do everything right in the classroom, there are so many other factors in their lives that we have no control over and could be working against them. I blame the parents. I realize many are overworked, overwhelmed and unfortunately often single parents, but every time the just give in to their child's every whim it reinforces the whole 'I don't have to do anything, it will be taken care of for me' behavior.

Every situation and student is unique, but I'm thinking motivation is the key, Easier said than done, right? I'm also a fan of many small breaks (I've heard the comment your attention span is about your age in minutes) but of course, Murphy's Law dictates that the administrator will choose that moment to pop in and out for their evaluation...

Of course, you've been at this a good bit longer than I, I 'spect your much better at it Still, it's nice to vent every now and again, ain't it?

Does the school allow you to fail them? (I ask because I know that some administrators support that moronic "no child left behind" policy.) If so, break out the red pens and go to town.

School is supposed to be a wakeup call, and teachers are supposed to have teeth.

Oh hey, that's just unfair. I always took notes, even in high school. It was remembering to turn the homework in that always got me, I'm not organized in the best of times.

I started sleeping in class in college though, because of the workloads I was dealing with. Oof.

...If someone fails a pop quiz because they couldn't watch a twenty minute video of listen to the four topical Q&A sessions, though, they probably do deserve it. We're not talking impossibly difficult here.

You are noticing one aspect about students. There are other aspects that science confirms:
"This is the way kids these days think. My administration calls it "the millennial student" and apparently we are supposed to cater to their habits. Fully half of my 60 person general physics class this semester sits in the back of the room on either phone or laptop. They're not taking notes. The good ones are working on assignments for other classes (as if being present in mine causes the information to enter their pores). The bad are giggling at Facebook comments."
...."But here's the thing: there is convincing evidence that this inveterate multitasking has a serious, measurable and long lasting negative effect on cognitive function. Look up Stanford psychologist Clifford Nass sometime. There's a lovely episode of Frontline from a year or so ago featuring him. He has shown that multitaskers are not only bad at multitasking, but they are also worse than nonmultitaskers on every individual one of the tasks."

There is more on the science of students with ruined brains at http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/its-not-just-rude-its-ruining-your-brain