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I can remember I had one teacher who would allow us to contract for our grade. The teacher made up a list of work that had to be done at each level... the kid could then decide how lazy he/she wanted to be.
Aside from that, I think the more students participate in the class, the better the class and the more interested they may become. That could involve a sort of round-robin style of problem solving, for example... you call one kid to solve a problem in front of the class, then that kid calls the next kid, etc.
That kind of game-playing always appealed to me, right through college and into graduate school. Another idea could be to use student (not self-) graded quizes fairly frequently. You could even have students participate in making up the quiz questions - live in real time in class - and then students solve on paper. Then hand papers back a row to be graded by a peer or whatever. You could then tie in quiz performance, as a class and not individually, to the final exam somehow... like, if class average was 90+ on weekly quizzes, maybe cut the difficulty of the final exam questions, or something like that - be creative.
Another idea... maybe allow students to opt out of the final. Or opt out if they have at least a B average going into the final. Or maybe opt (in advance) to take final exam grade as final class grade, thereby negating a mediocre performance earlier in the year.
You get the idea... these kinds of creative games that allow a student to feel like he has more control over his own destiny is what always appealed to me the most. Rather than just flat-out competing on a bell curve against everyone else in the class.
Thank you to everyone for all the suggestions and comments!!!
I think most teachers have an ideal picture in their heads... changing the world... but when we start dealing with actual students and all the problems that come with them... we realize that our picture doesn't fit perfectly into reality.
But I refuse to quit. Just because I can't change the world, it doesn't mean I can't change one student, right?!
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