One thing Eisenhower Junior High School Journalism teacher Zach Layton and his students have learned – perhaps more than anything else – not all world records are created equal.

“This record was so much harder and time-consuming than the last one,” Layton said. “It was way more complicated. But it also involved hundreds more of our students and gave them all a chance to show off their art skills. Some of the colored sheets are absolutely amazing! So, this record ended up being a lot more rewarding, I think for everyone.”

To refresh your memory (we told you all about it in the Dec. 2024 Taylorsville Journal), last time around some 130 students laid on a hallway floor, becoming a human conveyor belt. They took turns rolling on the floor to convey a crib-size mattress 60 yards.

On their second try, the students accomplished the feat in 95 seconds. They broke a record that had been set by a bunch of United Kingdom students a dozen years earlier.

This time around, the Taylorsville students bested a record set by students in Beijing, China. And it wasn’t close. The Chinese students laid out 5,930 colored pages, touching edge-to-edge, to create a “line.” The EJHS goal was 7,000 pages. They ended up with 8,027 colored sheets, touching edge-to-edge, in a 3,686-foot line.

“The students first had to completely color half size (5½” x 8½”) sheets of paper,” Layton explained. “No more than 2% of each sheet could be left white. I kept a spread sheet of everyone who contributed at least one colored sheet. There were 907 artists. A few faculty members did some; and a few were done by parents and siblings during parent-teacher conference night. But more than 850 of the artists were our students.”

That’s 850+ EJHS student participants this time around, compared to the 130 who rolled around on the floor a year-and-a-half earlier.

One student who participated in both records is 7th grader Paisley Sadler.

“I had never been involved in setting a world record – so I was very excited to roll on the floor to help out last year,” she said. “But this record is even more exciting. I love art. I colored, I don’t know, probably 50 to 100 sheets. It was much more involved this time. I think the students were more excited.”

Eighth grader Chloe Ting is one of Mr. Layton’s Journalism students who not only colored dozens of her own pages, but was also put on “double-check duty.” She, and a few other students, were asked to fill in blank spaces on sheets others had colored if they left just enough uncolored areas to disqualify them.

“I may have inspected and corrected as many as, like, a thousand pages,” Ting said. “It was fun and exciting going for the world record. But, by the end, it was so tiring. It was great having so many more students involved this time. The biggest lesson I learned is, even when you’re so tired you want to give up, stay with it. That’s a lesson I’ll remember forever.”

Layton added, once the decision was made to go for the “world’s longest line of coloring pages” record, the Granite School District inspired the messages on those 8,000+ sheets.

“Our district, this year, encouraged schools to come up with projects and activities to encourage kindness among students,” he said. “We included a variety of messages on the pages, like ‘Be Kind to Everyone,’ ‘EJHS Generals are Kind’ and ‘Share Your Kindness.’ It was a great theme to share with the hundreds of students who helped color.”

By the way, the human conveyor belt record set 18 months ago earned Eisenhower students a mention in something called “The Book of Alternative Records (alternativerecords.co.uk).” That’s all fine and dandy; but it’s not THE BOOK – the one we’ve all heard about our entire lives.

But this new record will appear in “that book.” The “world’s longest line of coloring pages” record is now awaiting official sanctioning by the Guinness World Records Book (guinnessworldrecords.com).

For the record (literally), it took student volunteers a little over two hours to precisely lay all of the colored sheets, edge-to-edge, across the EJHS gym floor. Then it took four different judges (community volunteers) another couple of hours to officially count the 8,027 sheets and to confirm there were no breaks in the string.

“Our students began coloring these sheets back in January,” Layton concluded. “We involved more than 85% of our 1,000 students. It was a lot of work; but the students I’ve spoken with all seem to feel it was fun and worth the effort.