Teenagers: conflicting aims

The problem teenagers have in class is that each one wants to do as much school work as possible while looking as cool as possible. 
Unfortunately, these are two conflicting aims.  The coolest kids are usually those who don't worry too much about school, yet manage to effortlessly get decent (not top) marks.  They need to know what the teacher said, but without really appearing to listen.  Ideally they can go right back to their clandestine conversations with their classmates right after the teacher's finished giving instructions.

How can we, as teachers, address this conflict?

Two words: creativity and sharing.

If the tasks have a certain amount of creativity, then the stduents have the freedom to be ironic and playful and impress their friends with how witty they are.

Example: I had to teach the fairly boring structure for sequences ("first, then, next, after that...finally") and I had my students write instructions for how to do something.  Now, this could be a reasonably dull task, but since my students know that they are always asked to read each other's work after, they decided to have some fun with it.  The usual suspects wrote boring stuff like how to make coffee. 
Then there was Ricky.  He chose to write "How to write graffitti"  ("First, think of something offensive to say.  Then, find a nice blank wall in your neighborhood...")
Another student actually explained how to roll a joint (I won't repeat those instructions here).