Some days, I don’t know why I decided to teach Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Yesterday was one of those days.

“She could have said this whole page in one sentence, literally one sentence,” the cool new 12th-grader, Arthur, shared with the class. “Like, she’s so wordy. Just say, ‘Those trees are cool.’ That’s all we need to know.”

The rest of the class nodded like he had just cracked the code and now there was no point in reading the rest of the book. I stood there with too much to say and not enough time to say it.

What I did say was, “I understand what you’re saying. Any other thoughts?”

Was it my job to defend Shelley’s writing? I couldn’t decide. I didn’t know what to do. The negativity was so contagious that the entire rest of the period was spent summarizing the “wordy” chunks of text in that chapter into teenager lingo.

I suddenly dreaded the following weeks’ lesson plans, which were filled to the brim with “Frankenstein.”

The previous year’s ELA Regents argumentative essay topic started running through my head: “Should English curriculum focus on the classics?” Even though I had graded dozens of essays on the topic, I myself had not come to a final decision on the issue.

Yet there I was, teaching an 1818 text to kids who think 2012 is a long time ago. It felt like I was messing it all up, and the kids would never want to read again.

Every decision we make as teachers feels so overwhelmingly important and political. Having good intentions never feels good enough in this line of work.

What worked yesterday doesn’t always work today. Even just a minute ago, it seemed like I'd had it all figured out until nope, I didn’t! Turns out everything you thought you knew about that kid or that teaching style isn’t going to work anymore, and you have to switch it up.

So I switched it up.

“OK, friends,” I said to the students the next time I saw them. “Yesterday, y’all had a lot of criticism for Mary Shelley. So today I want you to pick up your pencil and write the next chapter yourself. If you could write it, how would you go about it?”

Finally, a spark in their eyes! With the next chapter summary in hand, they began writing with a fire in their hearts.

Even though yesterday had not gone as planned, I saw a future for the class that included Shelley’s work.

Maybe it wasn’t going to be how I imagined it, but my dreamy imaginings aren’t what is actually important. The real students in front of me, and their relationship to writing and reading, is what matters.

And by the looks on their faces as my students typed page after page of that next chapter, I knew I hadn’t totally destroyed that connection.

On days like that day, I do know why I decided to teach “Frankenstein.”

Franken-Teacher is a second-year high school English teacher in Manhattan.