Are you refusing to work?

I have a very difficult students who I'm sure I've talked about before, but can't remember his alias. I guess I'll rename him with...Elliot. Elliot is severely unmotivated in most content areas, but especially in reading and writing. He often does not participate during reading mini lessons or write during Writers' Workshop. I've tried many things to get him going, but he just doesn't seem to care. I would like to rephrase that. He does seem to care, because when I talk about his behavior or refusal to work, he often gets a very angry look like he is upset with himself. In most cases, I understand where a child's anger or dislike for a certain type of work come to play, but with Elliot, it happens so often that I'm confused by it.

Today during math, we were noticing patterns when multiplying by 10s, 100s, 1000s. The class had a sheet to follow along with. We talked about the pattern, the answer for each one, and how we would figure out the next. Well, we excluded Elliot. I sauntered (we're learning about verbs of steel as well) to his desk only to notice all the blanks were filled with question marks. The first words out of my mouth were, "This is unacceptable!" I said this first because this was a discussion I was about to have for about the 10th time with Elliot. We've talked about it being unacceptable to write a question mark in the blank when we are working as a group and when there are 2 teachers to help (myself and my aide). I erased all of the question marks for him, tried to get him going again and he just put his head down. I asked, "Are you refusing to do your work?" He nodded his head.

-- I am documenting exactly how I handled the situation. I would not handle this type of situation like this every time, but I have given this child about 300 chances in many different settings within our classroom. You may not agree with this, but at the moment, and still during reflections, I agree with what I did. Also keep in mind that I already have a conference scheduled for tomorrow with this child's parents.--

I asked Elliot to leave my classroom. My door was already propped open, so I asked him to sit right in the doorway. When I got the rest of the class back on track, I asked Elliot if he was ready to re-enter our classroom and return to work. If he was not, I told him that he could go sit in Ms. H's room next door. (She is aware of this student's behavior and is very helpful in stressful times.) He followed me back to his desk and immediately put his head down. I said, "Grab your paper. You are going to Ms. H's room." "I don't want to go in there." "I'm sorry. It is not a choice. I gave you a choice to work and you chose not to. You have no more choices." He went to Ms. H's room and sat for the remainder of math.

I obviously have to figure out some way to motivate this student to work, but I'm stumped. He HATES cooperative work (and we do a lot of that), he hates anything that takes too much energy, he hates talking in front of the class (which I don't force on any child), and he hates when I ask him to do something. This child is very bright in math (commended on our state test last year) and fairly competent in reading. Unfortunately, he has only shown me that he is incapable of doing work without my step-by-step-by-step guidance....uuuugggghhhh!