I am not a mind reader, but I already know that there is a student in your class who can tell you every single Pokémon evolution but cannot remember the three vocabulary words you introduced yesterday. Another can name every player on the Chicago Fire soccer team, including positions and stats, but shuts down the second you put a reading passage in front of them.
You might have a student who wants to talk about elevators, weather, Minecraft, trains, Taylor Swift, sharks, flags, or one very specific YouTube creator approximately 400 times per day.
Teachers sometimes see these special interests as something we need to work around. We redirect the conversation back to the lesson. We remind students that we are talking about fractions right now, not dinosaurs. We save their favorite topic as a reward for finishing the “real” work.
What if we stopped fighting their interests and started using them?
Special interests are an access point
Special interests are often discussed in relation to autistic students, but intense interests are certainly not exclusive to autistic kids. Most of us have taught students who become completely absorbed in a particular topic, character, sport, game, animal, or hobby. Those interests give us information.
They tell us what captures a student’s attention and show us where that student already has background knowledge and vocabulary. They can give us a starting point for building relationships, increasing participation, and making unfamiliar academic tasks feel more accessible.
Most importantly, using a student’s interests does not mean every single assignment needs to become Minecraft-themed for the rest of the school year. We can use what already matters to a student as a bridge to what we want to teach.
Start with connection, not compliance
One of the fastest ways I have found to build a relationship with a student is to become genuinely interested in what they love. You do not need to become an expert. In fact, sometimes knowing absolutely nothing works in your favor – ask them to teach you!
If a student loves the LA Lakers, ask who their favorite player is. If they are obsessed with trains, let them explain the difference between two types. If they love Pokémon and you have no idea what a Charizard is, congratulations. You now have approximately six months of conversation material!!!
This matters academically, too. Students are much more likely to take risks with adults who have demonstrated that they value what the student brings into the room. Connection is not something we have to squeeze in before the “real teaching” begins, it’s genuinely part of the teaching.
Use interests to lower the barrier to difficult work
Special interests can be incredibly useful when a student is reluctant to engage with a particular skill. I do not mean this in a manipulative way, but in a way that safely invites a student to try something new and/or hard.
A student who avoids writing might be much more willing to write a player profile for their favorite athlete. A student working on decoding can practice with words connected to animals they love. A student learning percentages can calculate sports statistics. A student practicing main idea and details can read a passage about tornadoes instead of another generic passage about recycling.
The academic expectation does not have to change, consider that the entry point does.
This distinction is important. We are not removing rigor (ew, I hate that word) by making content more relevant. We are giving students a reason to engage with the skill long enough to practice it.
I created this Soccer Morphology Warm-Up because of a 5th grade student I have that told me how boring school is. He’s deeply invested in Real Madrid, loves soccer, and said reading has never been anything but boring for him. Well, I can’t guarantee he is going to be asking for morphology slides during recess, but this has helped tremendously in capturing his interest and getting him engaged. I know he is not the only one who would benefit from an interest based approach.
I especially love this concept for students who have experienced a lot of academic failure. When school has repeatedly communicated, intentionally or unintentionally, that you are “bad” at something, it makes sense that you would stop volunteering to do it. Familiar content can reduce some of that cognitive load. Instead of simultaneously figuring out an unfamiliar topic and practicing a difficult skill, the student gets to stand on something they already know.
Let special interests become classroom expertise
There is another huge benefit that I think we overlook. Special interests can give students opportunities to be seen as competent.
A child who struggles through most of the school day may suddenly become the person in the room who knows the most about sharks. A student who rarely raises their hand might happily explain how a particular video game works. A student receiving intensive academic support may know more about space exploration than every adult in the building. Make room for that expertise!!
Invite students to contribute relevant knowledge, like letting them recommend books for the classroom library. Give them opportunities to research, create, teach, present, categorize, compare, design, or explain.
Students deserve opportunities to experience themselves as knowledgeable at school, especially when so much of their day is spent being shown what they do not know yet.
You do not have to turn every interest into a reward
This is one of the biggest shifts I would encourage teachers to make. We often take the thing a student loves and immediately turn it into a contingency.
“Do your reading, then we can talk about trains.”
Sometimes a preferred activity absolutely can be part of a reinforcement system. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Still, a student’s interests do not always need to be something they earn. Their special interests can simply exist in the classroom.
A dinosaur book can be the reading material. Drawing can be part of demonstrating comprehension. A conversation about trains can be a relationship-building interaction that does not require five completed math problems first.
When we only allow access to students’ interests after compliance, we miss an enormous opportunity to use those interests proactively.
Pay attention to what lights them up
You do not need an elaborate interest inventory or a color-coded spreadsheet, just literally watch your students.
Notice what they draw. Listen to what they talk about at lunch. Look at the books they choose when they have free time. Ask what they watched over the weekend. Notice which topics suddenly turn a one-word-answer kid into someone who has been speaking for seven uninterrupted minutes. Then use that information.
Use the info and build it into a word problem, find a related passage, add it to a writing prompt, use it for a research project, inspire an example during your lesson. Spend three minutes learning enough about the topic that you can ask a decent follow-up question tomorrow.
Engagement does not always require a new app, an elaborate classroom transformation, or hours spent creating materials. Sometimes the best engagement strategy is already sitting right in front of us, desperately trying to tell us everything they know about hermit crabs.
