Students present 'Beyond the Books' project to promote integrity, perseverance

Students taking part in a recorded presentation for the San Bernardino County Office of Education described a children's-book project called "Beyond the Books," saying the books are intended to encourage integrity, perseverance and empathy among young readers.

Student 1, a student presenter for the project, said, "I enjoyed working at this project because it was exciting, and just the fact that my name is on the book excites me even more." Student 2, another student presenter, described learning outcomes: "I I got to learn about, like, integrity and learning how to, like, show emotion and show people what what it really means." Student 3 said the books respond to common school experiences: "Because, you know, kids always go through things, like, in school, you know, kids are mean, they're bullies, whatever, and reading books that uplift other children would make them feel better about themselves in general. Yeah."

The students described the project's theme as uplifting. Student 5 said, "The reason we chose our books theme was because it's very encouraging." Student 4 characterized the theme as intended "to help be inspirational, to help inspirational little kids are gonna read their book, you know, to keep things like love thinking and have it be fun." Student 3 emphasized perseverance as a focus: "Perseverance is like a good word, a good word to use and, you know, a lot of people should always, like, do their best to keep moving and push forward even when things are hard... Just know that you always can and things always do get better. Yep."

Students described collaborative benefits and personal growth from creating the books. Student 1 said, "What I like most about working with my classmates is the collaboration between all of us all." Student 5 added that the project helped students get to know each other: "Was, getting to know them more and learning about their stories and everything about them." Student 6 said the project helped them become "open to others more more openly than how I used to be, and I can show and turn it to others how I wasn't back then. No."

The presenters said the intended audience is younger children. Student 4 explained, "Our duration we showed our book theme was help, like, educational for the little kids, and the books help them understand what we do inside this. Because how we impacted ourselves and we were writing the book and really with our heart." Student 5 said she hopes the books reach readers: "I hope this book makes a difference in someone's life because it made a difference in mine."

The students closed the presentation with a repeated tagline tied to their project: "At San Bernardino County Schools, we are going beyond the books," which the presenters repeated in unison during the recording.

No formal actions, votes or policy changes were a part of the recording; the segment consisted of student remarks about the project and its themes.