Today I offered Ben to help him clean out his room, but he said he did not want to. I told him that teachers are helping students get their things organized and I was willing to help him, but he demanded he was not going to do that. I wanted to finish our lesson on exponents which stemmed from a problem he had difficulty with on the MAPS test. During his test, he said, "Look at this!!" I did and realized it was a problem within his ability, but yet to him he was taken aback by it. So today I wanted to show him how, if you break it down, the problem could be manageable. During the explanation, he questioned why negative exponents cannot be left in the answer. I explained to him how simplifying means to reduce to lowest form (ie we don't say 20/5 we say 4). Then he said he doesn't care about it and it makes it more difficult for him. He said, "I'm never going to be able to learn this if you keep calling it negative exponent". I realized he was going to question anything I said, so I sat down and we paused. I asked him what I can do. He said that I needed to go slower to help him. I said sure, I can do that. Then he said, "Actually, you've done this all year." I said, "Ok Ben, you are really going to be like this to me? I think I've been extremely fair in accommodating you this year. Both academically and personally, with the way you've treated me. This behavior might work to push other people away but you're not running me off, I'm here to stay." He was quiet the rest of the period working with his legos.