Challenging the student

The challenge in unleashing this hidden intellectualism that all students most likely have is not necessarily in getting them to read about what interests them. The part that teacher’s must learn to do is to convince these students to look at their topic of choice through the eyes of an intellectual. Most students are going to read about what strikes them as “cool.” What the teacher needs to do is challenge them to analyze what makes that cool. What parts of, let’s say baseball, interests that student the most. Challenge that student to form an argument for why baseball is America’s pastime and what makes their favorite player their favorite player. But not only challenge them to find what they like about the sport but also have them look at the other side as well. Similar to planting naysayers in this class, have the student find some negative things about the sport and have the student do their best to respond to these negative aspects with convincing arguments.