ASSUMPTION, Ill. (WAND) - A local teacher is making sure students and staff at her school are taken care of, and it all started with one Facebook post that spread throughout the community.Â
Kayla Berner is a kindergarten teacher at Bond Elementary School in Assumption. Berner says, she loves teaching and being with her kids, so doing anything she can to make them happy and help them learn she's going to do.Â
A few weeks ago Berner decided to share a post on Facebook saying in part, "How cool would it be for each student to receive one free book every month at no cost to their parents? Scholastic has books every month that are $1. I would LOVE for each of my students to be able to bring home one new book each month during the school year from September to May. "
Her response from the community and her Facebook friends was bigger than what she thought.Â
"I thought I might get five or six. No, within a half hour I had like 36, so it was crazy," Berner explains.Â
Berner said she didn't know if the post would work. She was really just jumping on the bandwagon, but to her surprise it worked better than what she thought.
"I seriously tried to comment back. I was like OK, my class is funded. Let's see if we can get all of kindergarten funded and that lasted an hour," Berner laughs.Â
In a matter of two days, Berner received enough money to sponsor Bond and Gregory Elementary Schools. Now, each month students kindergarten through fifth grade will get a free book.Â
"Some kids don't get books, you know. I think it's a little bit of excitement now, these kids can take home each month from school to share with their parents," Berner said.Â
Berner explains once she passed out the books, it was a great time to talk about community with her students. She explained, they live in a community, but community is much more. It's people giving back and helping out one another.Â
"Raider-nation is amazing. I mean what more could you ask for from your community? Tons of support, it's amazing," Berner explains with a smile.Â
