How Do We Motivate the Underachievers?

To all you teachers out there, I would like to propose a question: How do we motivate the underachievers, regardless of subject. I taught mathematics to high school students, and I can tell you that teaching low-level math was quite a challenge. Getting those students to "buy-in" to my bag of goods was quite the task. Yet I had tremendous success. Let me know your thoughts and I will reveal mine.

To good teaching...