DAYTONA BEACH — Turie T. Small Elementary School students shared story time with a host of community leaders-turned-readers on Friday morning during the ninth annual African American Read-In.

The event welcomed 32 guest readers to the school to celebrate African American literature with students and sit before them as positive role models.

“The whole purpose is to get the community involved in being in the classroom in front of students,” said Principal Cameron Robinson, noting the ability to interact with successful community members gives students “something to strive for.”

Readers ranged from retired teachers to city officials to business professionals to district administrators including Volusia Superintendent Tom Russell, who read “Something Beautiful” by Sharon Dennis Wyeth to a “perceptive group” of first graders.

“I can see the amount of time that the teacher has spent with reading with these students,” Russell said. “They ask probing questions. They could make predictions as the story went along.”

The theme of the book Russell read danced around “persistence” and “a search for beauty,” he said, adding he wanted to share his own childhood reading struggles with his audience and the persistence and practice reading requires.

Along with exposing students to books written about African American characters, part of the day’s purpose served to put character education front and center, with values like honesty and kindness woven into the plots of those stories read aloud.

In a third grade class where Edward Brooks, general manager of Omnitronics, read “Each Kindness” by Jacqueline Woodson, students listened as Brooks hit on the importance of not letting mistakes or missteps overshadow good deeds.

“A lot of times the bad things that we do, they seem a whole lot bigger than the good things that we do,” Brooks said. “But it’s never true that you’ve never done something good and sometimes we have to work extremely hard to forgive ourselves and other people for the bad things but, believe me, even behind all of the bad things there’s some good things. You just have to work at looking at them.”

“I’m hoping that they have a better perspective on those different qualities that we’re looking to teach them every day,” Robinson said.

He’s also optimistic that the morning left readers with a lasting impression of how polite, courteous and presentable his students are.

“Hopefully,” Robinson said, “they’ll get a different view of Turie T. Small Elementary School."