The Bank of Becky's Class

I’m teaching history this year, which is not my field of expertise. In fact, you could call me a history dummy. Oh sure, I know about, say, Lincoln’s assassination, but if you asked me the date of when it happened I have no idea. I’m not into things like dates and numbers. I prefer the stories of history, and the people of the past.
So that’s the way I teach the class. I know if I focus on events and dates it will be a boring class to sit through, and they will memorize everything for the test and promptly forget it afterwards. And what’s the value in that? Plus, I hate lecturing for two straight hours, so I’ve decided to run my class a little differently.
This week we talked about money. We use it all the time, but have you actually looked at a dollar bill or a pound recently? The amount of historical information on both is pretty intense. Take a buck out of your wallet. Right now. I’ll wait……
Now look on the backside. See the eagle symbol. It’s a very familiar symbol to all of us, but have you really looked at it? The eagle has an olive branch to symbolize peace (which you probably knew), but count the number of leaves on the branch, and the number of olives on the branch. 13. Then count the number of arrows in the eagles other claw. Also 13. Now look at the Eagles shield (unsupported by the way, to represent that America stood alone and wasn’t reliant on other nations.) How many bars? 13. And the explosion of little stars above the eagles head? Yep-there too. (The explosion represents that when the country works together any problems can be overcome or be “blown away.”) The number 13 (which represents the 13 original colonies) is all over the one dollar bill. And that’s just one tiny portion of history on a bill.
So in my class, after discussing all the details of all the bills from England and America, I asked the students to work in small groups to create their own bills. It had to include a bank name, some serial numbers and had to describe some history, either personal or world history. Then they shared their bills with the rest of the class and described the meaning.
The results were so cute and creative I just had to share them. Here are some of the bills.