Shaping Character at The King’s Corner School

The King’s Corner School implemented The Positivity Project for the first time in the 2024-2025 school year. The year prior, we were looking for ways to talk about positive characteristics with many of our students, and then we learned about The Positivity Project through another educator. 

Ease of Use

What I immediately liked about P2, was that it seemed very user-friendly and easy to implement. I wanted something our teachers could use to foster really good discussions around these topics, but not have to put in a lot of extra preparation. P2 was perfect for that because everything is already there, very easy to access, and very easy to tailor and adapt to a classroom’s needs on any given day. The Google Slide presentations are easily accessible by grade level and organized efficiently on a weekly schedule. There are also resources that are easy to send out to parents via the Remind app so they can also know what the students are discussing and support them in those discussions. 

Character Strengths Alignment with Chapel Messages

One of the other things that I really like about P2 is that the character strengths that are discussed and focused on align very well with what we try to teach our students. We are a Christian school, and it is very easy for our teachers to add Biblical verses and foundations to go along with what is being taught and reinforced. One of the ways we have incorporated school-wide involvement is by having our weekly Chapel messages focus on our P2 character strength of the week. We have been able to let our guest speakers know what we would like them to talk about ahead of time and it has worked out really well because our students are not only hearing it in their classrooms, but in the weekly Chapel service as well. I also do morning announcements as the students line up before going to class. At this time, I will also talk about the P2 character strength of the week very briefly, and give them some encouragement on how to implement that in their day. 

Discipline and Common Language

Our discipline is done in a way that really tries to teach each student the value of admitting what happened, apologizing, and turning away from that behavior. Because we are very intentional about reaching the child’s heart, we take time to have conversations about what happened and how it affected others. If the issue is gossip, then we take the time to discuss with a child why that can be damaging to others, and we try to get the child to think about it from a different perspective than they have before. We truly believe and have seen that this creates an avenue for the child to change their behavior because it is the right thing to do. The P2 resources help with this because they are so readily available and we can refer to the topics and what has been discussed. When students hear it in the classroom, in morning announcements, and at chapel, it is reinforced from many different angles and perspectives. 

Strengthening Friendships and Developing Virtues

Our Campus Minister/Family Liaison had this to say: “I know that primarily the credit goes to God, because His is all the glory, but I acknowledge that The Positivity Project has helped our student body to strengthen their friendships and character as well as developing virtues that perhaps were not present before. I have a very special instance in which there was a student out in the playground who was having a rough time. At that moment I was talking with one of our 8th grade students, we were getting ready to go on a walk around campus. She approached the student who was having a hard time and invited her to go on the walk with us! But that was not all, she also took the time and invited other students that have the tendency to isolate themselves. I was very proud of her. During our walk, she made sure that in every conversation, the other students also gave their point of view and were included. As a leader here at KCS, it fills me with pride to see that our students put into practice the virtues they have learned through the year.” 

We have many stories like that where students are exhibiting positive character strengths and P2 is instrumental in helping to create that culture in our school. I was just supervising recess today and enjoying watching the students play and laugh. Simple things like a group of students seeing another student show up to watch what they are playing and the group of students readily inviting that student to join them. Moments like those really make my job a joy and also spark a gratefulness that we have resources like P2 to help teach our students.