Tovani: Chapter Two

In chapter two, Tovani writes of her frustrations and stresses that come along with unpreparedness. What I would take away from this chapter is that it is important to never underestimate what you, as a teacher, will have to prepare for. I remember being a young student avoiding work at times because it wasn’t interesting or felt boring. Tovani speaks a lot on finding interesting text that will engage her learners. As an Art Ed major, it’s hard to connect with this aspect of the chapter. However, I will always be looking for engaging activities for my students, especially since an art class is so activity-heavy. If I do introduce reading material for my older students, it would explicitly apply to one of our longer assignments. As students get older, it will become easier to plan a long-term lesson; the more advanced a class, the more time is needed to work on projects. For younger classes that will meet with me less often, I may need to think outside the box to connect lessons for longer periods of time: maybe a series of small projects that create a larger, complicated resulting project. This would allow my students to work towards an end goal per unit (Tovani talks about this concept as targets) and visually observe the results as a rewarding achievement. Most of Tovani’s “T’s” can be applied to my content area, as well as others. However, targets and tasks are the two that I find most applicable and look forward to using.