Teacher raises $1,000 to take kids to see ‘Figures’

“The movie is about three girls who are smart.’

NASHVILLE - Before the school bus even reached the movie theater, Meredith Zepf had already started crying.

The KIPP Kirkpatrick Elementary teacher wanted to take her fourth-grade students — most of whom live in Nashville’s government housing projects and some of whom have never been in a theater — to see the movie “Hidden Figures.”

During Black History Month, she wanted her students to see what the United States looked like in the ‘60s and the racial tension that was experienced in the workplace and community.

She also wanted her kids to see faces like their own — strong, smart black women and men — making a significant contribution to a historic moment.

In three days, she raised $1,000 through a crowdfunding site to take 60 kids from KIPP Kirkpatrick Elementary to the theater on Valentine’s Day.

With a busload of children chattering in excitement, she couldn’t hold back her tears of joy.

“You’ve got to dream big when you work in schools like I do,” Zepf said after she entered the Regal 27 theater and began filling dozens of brown paper bags with popcorn for her students. “You’ve got to shoot for the moon.”

The moon is exactly where the NASA space team was aiming.

But before then, they had to get the launch and landing calculations and the spacecraft design correct to get into orbit.

Part of that mission fell to three women, whose story is depicted in the Oscar-nominated movie “Hidden Figures.”

There’s Katherine Johnson, a numerical genius who hand-calculated the trajectories that helped astronaut John Glenn become the first American to orbit Earth; Dorothy Vaughan, who became NASA’s first black supervisor and an expert programmer in the early days of computers; and Mary Jackson, who would become NASA’s first African-American female engineer.

Realities of segregation

With popcorn in their laps and soda in the seats’ cup holders — treats funded through community support to make the experience extra special — the students giggled at the occasional swear word and snickered at a small kiss between characters. They clapped at moments of success when Glenn made it into orbit. But they also sat stunned and silent at some of the realities of segregation.

They saw a coffee pot labeled “colored” that no white person would drink from and water fountains with signs that said “white only.”

They watched as Johnson ran nearly a mile every day, sometimes through the pouring rain, simply to use the bathroom.

She couldn’t go where the white women went. Instead, she had to use the facility for black women in a basement far away from her desk.

And, a few days after the field trip, with the students back in their brightly decorated classroom where math equations are posted all over the walls, they talked about how that made them feel. “Disgusted,” said Taybeon Lynch. “Angry,” Jacques Battle added. “I would feel unappreciated,” Teona Dallas concluded. “It’s not fair.”Segregation and racism, as they understand and experience it, isn’t fair.

Isha Hassan also saw inspiration on screen as the character of Katherine Johnson climbed a ladder to work out equations on a giant chalkboard.

“The movie is about three girls who are smart,” Hassan said. “They did what they wanted to do, and they worked hard.”

Just as Zepf does every day for her students.