The Power of a Penny

Hello, friend, and welcome back to another episode of Artworks for Teachers. I’m your host, Susan Riley, and today is just you and me, One of the things, though, that I’ve noticed about this time of year is the observation skills of our students, and perhaps even of ourselves, seem to fly out the window. There are things that’s happening all around us all the time, and it’s so fast and it’s so quick that…

Oftentimes we’ll miss things that just immediately happen in front of our face. We have no idea. How many times have you gone through an intersection and then realized, my gosh, I didn’t even see that that car was over there or that person was over there. It happens so often. And especially now at the holiday season, which is the time that we’re in together right now at the time of this recording with all of the things that are happening with the season and gifts and papers to grade and all of the assignments that we’re working on and assemblies and just all the things. It’s so easy to get distracted. So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to build our observation skills of our students in a really fun way. So the first thing we’re going to actually put this in practice together. Now, if you’re listening to this while you’re driving,

I don’t want you to actually do this while you’re driving or walking or whatever. You’re in action. If you’re at a place where you can take out a paper and a pen, great. Do so right now. If you’re not, I just want you to think through this, visualize it wherever you are right now. Okay? I want you right now, if you have a pen and paper, I would love for you to draw the face of a penny. And if you don’t have a paper and pencil right now, think about this, visualize it in your mind. Picture all of the elements of a penny. And I want to make sure that you’re thinking of all of the things that are on the front of a penny. Okay? We can’t just say it’s Abraham Lincoln’s head. That’s too easy. Think about which direction is he facing, left or right? Are there any words on the front of the penny? If so, what are they and where are they located? Are there any numbers on the front of the penny. If so, where are they located? Think about all of the things that are on the front design of a penny and consider where they are, where they’re located, what they say. And if you have a paper and pencil, just sketch that out as quickly as you can. If you’re sitting here and you don’t have access to that, be thinking about that. Can you picture that in your mind? Can you see it?

Now, as you’re thinking about this and as you’re drawing this, I want you to rate yourself. How confident are you that this is correct? Are you 50 % sure? Are you 90 % sure? Or are you like really confident? I am like 100 % sure I’m 100 % right here. Go ahead and just kind of scale yourself. Give yourself a number. How confident are you? Okay, now.

When it’s safe to do so, if you can do it right now, great. If not, go ahead and wait until it is safe, but pull out a penny if you have access to one, if you have it in your wallet, take a look at it. If you don’t, it’s easy to Google. So take a look at the front of the penny and compare it to what you had drawn or imagined. How close were you? How accurate were you? And does that match your confidence level?

This is a really great exercise to do with students, particularly right this time of year. And it doesn’t have to be a penny, but it could be something that is as mundane and simple and taken for granted as a penny often is. Why? Well, first of all, everybody thinks they know what a penny looks like, right? But how many of you, I bet a bunch of you, were surprised by some of the things that you got wrong. Every time I do this exercise, and I’ve done this exercise a lot, I still get things wrong. I still can’t quite remember which direction he’s facing, which direction that face goes, where the words in God we trust are located, right? There are still times that I get those things wrong and I’m always surprised, like, I thought I knew that by now, right? And so…

This does a couple of things. It allows us to one, be surprised by something mundane, but two, it encourages us to then look more closely at something that we had taken for granted before, right? Something simple. And so what naturally happens is that when you start to look at the penny, you really start to look at all of the details then. And sometimes you’ll even flip it over to see the back and be like, I never noticed that before that was on the back, right?

So a penny is a great way to do this, a great introduction to building our observation skills. And the reason it’s great at this time of year is there’s coins are everywhere. Think about the Salvation Army signs and the jingle bells that are going on outside of local places. Everybody has leftover pennies here and there. And so it’s great. We have access to them and being able to just share that with our students and having them be a part of that surprise and that observation is so rewarding right now. It gives them something to practice with. And as we’re extending that, you can then offer, okay, we just did this with a penny, but what are some other things that are surrounding us that are obvious in plain sight, but are hiding from us maybe that we haven’t noticed before? Are there other things in our classroom or on the assignment that we’re working on, or on the image that we’re looking at in this textbook that we may not have noticed before, but now we can, right? And so that again helps us to slow down our thinking. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, I thought, you know, I use this penny exercise all the time and I get surprised by the results that I see, but are there some things about the penny that would be really interesting for students or even adults to know. And so I have cultivated these for you. And I think one, just for fun, but also if you’re doing this exercise with your students, think sharing some of these facts about the penny will encourage students to consider and even observe it more deeply and to do maybe a little bit of research on other historical items that are just in our everyday purview. So did you know that the first penny was minted in 1792. And this was actually the first coin ever in the United States that was minted, was the penny. And the penny was minted in 1792. It was a woman with flowing hair who was supposed to represent Lady Liberty. Now this was not the first design for the penny. The first design for the penny actually happened in 1787, which was five years earlier by Ben Franklin. So Benjamin Franklin actually designed the first penny and his design had the phrase, mind your business on it. It wasn’t a lady, there was a unique design that he had kind of come up with and then he put the words mind your business on it. And so this was his original design. It got changed a lot, but then this became the first coin minted in the US in 1792 with the Lady Liberty on front. It wasn’t until 1909 that Abraham Lincoln’s head was added to the front of the coin that was done by President Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt actually, in honor of Lincoln’s 100th birthday. So there was a way to honor Abraham Lincoln at the time in 1909. So the penny changed to have a Lincoln’s head on it. This was there were 11 designs of the penny total but this is the one that really has stuck the longest. And it was also when the words in God we trust were added to the penny. So that didn’t happen until 1909. Now, most of us know this, but I still think it’s a fun fact. It costs more to make the penny than it’s currently worth. So it costs more than a penny to make it, which, you know, then why do we still have it?

And in fact, places like Canada do not have the penny anymore and the places overseas and in the military do not use the penny anymore. But the reason that we still do is because if we didn’t, stores would need to round up to the nearest fifth. So they would need to go to five cents, round up to the nearest five cents and it would cost consumers more. So that’s why we keep the penny because we want to make sure that people aren’t paying more than they’re supposed to. Most pennies last up to 25 years in circulation. So take a look at the pennies that you have and see where they land in that. If you are older than 25 years on a penny, on the date on the penny, you have a rare penny indeed. So I hope that those facts were interesting. I found them to be pretty interesting. And I know that students really kind of like that, those little history tidbits that go along with it. Now, why would we even need to be talking about the tidbits to a penny and the power of a penny? Because this simple, easy observational exercise leads us into understanding that the whole core process of observation is to slow down our thinking, right? This is extremely powerful when it comes to learning in the classroom especially now. Why? Because for a couple of reasons. First of all, how many of you have noticed that this year and in the last couple of years, progressively, students have been more and more difficult to get their attention, to maintain their attention, to maintain their engagement, right? I’m hearing from so many teachers who are like, these kids are like, it’s so frustrating trying to get them to pay attention, trying to get them engaged, right? And some of that we can talk about student apathy, right? I tend to agree with some of the researchers out there who are talking about the fact that it might not necessarily be that students have less attention. It might be that the learning itself that’s being presented is not fully relevant to them and they can’t see the purpose in it. I know that for the young people in my life, my daughter, my nieces and my nephews, this is a common complaint I hear about school a lot right now. What does this have to do with me? This isn’t relevant. Why do I have to learn that? I can just put that into Google or I can just put that into AI and it’ll produce it for me. And so part of the lack of attention is certainly I think the… trying to understand relevance and why this is important to them. But also, I should say and also, because I think it works hand in hand. I think students are also so used to moving at the speed of light. You know, they know how to swipe on an iPad by the time they’re two weeks old. You know, like, that’s an exaggeration, but seriously, the time, before they can walk, they know how to swipe. They know how to pull an app closed, right? They have grown up with so much fast technology that their brains are processing on overtime. And oftentimes when this is happening, particularly when students are young and when children are at that formative age, particularly between five and 15, what we’re seeing with the speed of processing in our brains is it’s happening so much faster. But the byproduct of that the thing that goes missing with that are the gaps that we are making connections faster, but we are losing the details that are a part of that connection. So that’s why when a student looks at a penny and you’ve asked them to draw it and suddenly they put the head the wrong way, they had no idea that there was words on it, they look down and they’re like, my gosh, I’ve never seen that before, right?

Because yeah, we know what a penny looks like, but the details are missing because our brains are moving too fast. So part of what our students are struggling with is how to slow down their thinking long enough to be able to observe things more deeply and to consider them more deeply, right? There’s rigor in that. There is a depth of knowledge in that that we can then encourage and develop. And what’s great about this process, is that when we’re developing these observational skills and we’re taking the time to actually teach these observational skills, we’re building the capacity for our students. Each and every time we do this, we’re building their stamina. We’re building the capacity for them to learn more deeply and with more perseverance and grit, right? So observation skills can lead to so many other advantages. And I did just say we have to teach this explicitly, right? So much I think we take for granted that students just naturally know how to do. They know how to look at a piece of artwork or they know how to read a piece of text, but they’re not looking at the nuances. They’re not looking at the details because they’ve never been trained in how to do it. So providing a simple exercise like that penny exercise that I shared with you can start to build those skills. And then you can expand on that and practice this every single day. It’s not hard. We could do this in the first five minutes of class as people are coming in and getting settled. We could do it as a closing activity as people are at different stages of finishing up an assignment and we’re pulling this back together. Again, short and sweet doesn’t have to be long, but it can be really powerful if we’re explicitly providing opportunities for our students to slow down their thinking and to provide reasoning for some things. So here are some ways that I like to think about how to do that. All right, so the first one, easy. We’ve talked about this a lot. It’s the strategy called see, think, wonder. So when you’re looking at something, you’re considering those three questions. What do I see? What do I think about what I’m seeing? And then what do I wonder? What questions do I have of what I’m seeing? And to answer each of those questions individually, right away,

Just by answering each of them individually, you’re slowing down the thinking. But what’s even better than that is that as you go through each of those questions, you provide as much detail as you possibly can. So when you ask, what do I see? I don’t just see a camera sitting in front of me on top of a computer, but I’m seeing that there are small, there’s small text in white font around the camera lens. There’s the word Sony that’s in the back. There is a muffled, a microphone on the back of the camera, right? Things that I’m seeing that’s not just a camera, all of the things, providing as much detail as I can in answer to that one question and being as exhaustive as I can before moving to the next question. So now you’re slowing down the thinking even further and encouraging your eyes to take in as much detail as possible. Do you know that your eyes cannot possibly take in all of the information that’s being given to it at any given time. It truly requires our eyes, our sight requires us to slow down in order to see everything that’s being thrown at it at any given moment. So that technique, See Think Wonder, super simple, super easy. You could do it with any picture. In our accelerator membership in January, we’re actually providing lots of different winter photographs that encourage the See, Think, Wonder routine and encourage lots of questionings and observations. You can do that for yourself as well and get those collections and have students just work through those. It’s incredible just by throwing up a piece of photography of a snowflake that has been zoomed in to see all of the details in that snowflake, how that will capture a student’s attention for five minutes. And you’ll be amazed at the detail that they will find. So something simple like that is great. Another thing that I like to use as an encouraging way to provide observational skills throughout the day is to simply ask the question, what makes you say that? So this doesn’t have to be with a piece of artwork or a piece of music that you’re looking at or observing in detail. It could be with literally anything that you’re having as a discussion.

Slowing down student thinking can happen by simply asking the follow-up question, what makes you say that? So if a student says, know, this is, I think that this is the answer to the question that you just asked, you simply ask, what makes you say that? It encourages them to provide evidence. It also encourages them to slow down and be able to think about, okay,

If I’m going to have this point of view, need to have a backup for it, right? Where my evidence is. But why? Why am I saying that that is the answer? What other knowledge do I have to be able to support that? The details matter. So this doesn’t require any arts whatsoever. You can do it all throughout the day too, in the middle of your instruction. It doesn’t require anything separate. Just the question, what makes you say that is going to be such a powerful way to bring the power of observation into your classroom in more detail. And then another tool that I like to use is the idea of having expert eyes. I had a colleague who once referred to it when she was working in math as math goggles, like you put on a set of goggles just to look at math a certain way. But if you’re having students observe something, if you’re having them work, this works really well when you’re working in science and if you’re looking at, you know, any kind of animal or ecosystem up close, having students put on their expert eyes about that particular item is really helpful because, first of all, it allows them to think like, I’m putting on something different. I’m looking through a different lens right now than I normally would. So again, it forces us to slow down our thinking and our processing. And the idea of expert eyes What you want to have them, encourage them to think about is what would an expert see in this scenario right now?

Okay, another strategy that I really like is something called expert eyes. I a colleague once call them math goggles when she was putting on the math goggles to help students see things in math more clearly. I like to call them expert eyes because again, kind of like that goggles idea, you’re looking at something through a different lens. This works really well, especially in science or math, something that is detail oriented, and you’re asking students to look for something as an expert would.

If you are an expert on ocean ecosystems, when you look at a picture or a photograph of something in the ocean, you’re gonna put on your expert eyes and tell me as an expert what I’m looking at here. What this does, first of all, it encourages research and more information gathering. It also enables students to become the experts in something and it also forces them to look more closely at what you’re asking them to discover, right? Because they can’t just share something easy, right? Like I see a whale, like there’s a whale in the ocean. Well, no expert is gonna point out that it’s a whale. The expert is going to say, this is a juvenile five-year-old humpback whale. And we can tell it’s a juvenile because of the way that it is using its, you know,

whatever it is in the ocean. So this idea of having students have their expert eyes on when they’re looking at something, just sharing that with your expert eyes. Take a look at this particular problem and help solve for X. It puts them in a different frame of mind. It helps them to immediately know, okay, I need to focus on this particular thing. Just these simple. prompts and ideas. I know, I know these are things that you’re like, my gosh, that’s so easy. That’s not even something that would be super helpful, but I promise you simple is sometimes the most powerful things that we can do. Now, if your students are struggling with observation or if we’re all struggling with seeing things more clearly, I think this is easily explained by something that architects often call the desire law.

The desire line in architecture is the easiest path that it takes for people to walk a certain way, right? So if you’re designing something, what’s the easiest way for a person to get from A to B, right? That’s the desire line. That’s where people want to go and that’s where they’re going to default to, right? And I think we all default to seeing things quickly, making quick decisions and moving ahead, right? It’s just how we’re wired and it’s how we’re set up to get through our day.

But there is such wonderful skill in slowing down our thinking and looking at observation more closely that helps us in so many other areas. And I think if we can just think about ways that we can provide students opportunities to observe more deeply using things like See Think Wonder or asking the question, what makes you say that? Or even just something like show that with your expert eyes, tell me about, et cetera we can encourage that slow thinking that enables for deep learning. So I hope that this episode was helpful for you today. I hope that you put it into practice that even if it’s just that penny exercise from the very beginning, I would love for you to just give that a whirl while your students are kind of jittery and getting ready for the holiday season and see if that helps. And I hope it really does. Thank you so much. Have a great day.