Novel Studies + Teenagers = Trouble

I have been teaching teenagers for 2 years, 6 months and 12 days. In that time, I've learned a great many things about life, but one of the most valuable lessons I've learned is that mixing teenagers and novel studies can make trouble! Today's Language Arts class was yet another good example of that . . . my students have been reading "Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux (they are ESL students, so this is a Penguin Reader edition of the book). During the time we've been studying the book, my *lovely* students have failed to do their homework twice, left materials at home, and generally fallen behind in their reading. Sigh. One of the first things I told my students about last week was the idea of completing a creative project to express what they have learned through reading the book. I provided them with a variety of possibilities including: a writing assignment where they would put one of the characters of the book on trial, a diorama assignment where they could express one of the scenes from the book in three dimensions, and an assignment where they would create a series of advertisements to entice people to buy the book "Phantom of the Opera". As we were talking about the possibilities this morning, one of the girls in the class put up her hand and said, quite seriously, "Kim, why does it say Phantom of the Opera" across the top of this paper?" (she was holding up the paper where I had outlined each of the possibilities for the creative assignment). Not quite comprehending what this girl was saying, all I could really do was stare at her for a moment. In that moment, everyone else in the class turned to stare at this student and said "Ahhhhh M, the project is for the book Phantom of the Opera!" That's when I figured out that she was genuinely confused! Sigh. I only repeated myself about 5 times, and wrote on the project sheet at least twice "This assignment will help you express what you learned about the Phantom of the Opera".

On a brighter note, I won't have to suffer these same questions and confusions next month when my students read "Lord of the Flies" (the full version), which happens to be approximately 2.5 times longer than Phantom. As I only have another 3 days left to teach these students (I'm coming out of teaching for the summer to focus on administration and curriculum), all I have to do at this point is get them through this current novel study ;-)