How to motivate your students in your lesson from an instructor at Harvard:

*Why should your idea interest someone other than your instructor? Well, perhaps...

• the truth isn't what one would expect, or what it might first appear to be on first reading;
• there's an interesting wrinkle in the matter, a complexity;
• the standard opinion of the text, or a certain published view, needs challenging or qualifying;
• a simple or common or obvious-seeming approach to this has more implications, or explains more, than it may seem;
• an approach to this that may seem irrelevant, isn't;
• there's a contradiction or tension here;
• there's an ambiguity, something unclear, that could mean two or more things;
• this matter is difficult, or complicated, and needs some sorting out;
• there's a mystery or puzzle or question here that needs answering or explaining;
• we can learn about a larger phenomenon by studying this smaller one;
• published views of the matter conflict;
• this seemingly tangential or insignificant matter is actually important, or interesting. And so on.