CINCINNATI -- Breana Johnson said she’s used to paying out of pocket to help her students get a quality education -- on Tuesday, the Dater High School teacher bought $90 in supplies so her 7th and 8th-grade students could complete a lab assignment.
"It’s hard," she said. "When you don’t have it, it makes it hard for them to learn."
Normally, she’s happy to do it, but some educational experiences are out of a single teacher’s financial reach -- no matter how valuable they might be. When the movie "Hidden Figures," a historical biopic about the black female NASA engineers who brought John Glenn home safely from his first orbit around the planet, was released, Johnson knew it would be a prime opportunity to integrate multiple subjects into a single lesson plan.
"Well, once this movie came out, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this will be great for cross-content. We can do math, science, social studies, English and tie it all together,'" she said. "But we have to get the funds to take them."
She started a GoFundMe campaign to collect the necessary funds to buy tickets for her 73 students to see the film, and members of the community responded generously. Johnson was creeping closer to her goal when one final donor swept in to take the problem off her hands.
KISS 107 morning hosts Brooke and Jubal surprised Johnson by collaborating with Atom Tickets and getting her 73 passes to the movie -- totally free of charge.
"I couldn’t believe it, especially because they were giving all of those tickets. That’s a lot of money, and to just have it donated to us for such a good cause is amazing," Johnson said.
The money she raised on GoFundMe will go toward booking buses for the trip and buying classroom supplies for the lesson afterward, according to Johnson.
