The Impact of P2 Club at Discovery Elementary

This article was written by Rebecca Reyes, School Counselor, Deanna Loyear, School Psychologist, and Kristen Baguio, Registered Behavior Technician, at Discovery Elementary in the Fruitvale School District in Bakersfield, California. Together they founded and advise the school's P2 Club, a student leadership group for 4th through 6th graders launched in 2023. Discovery serves roughly 700 students in grades K–6, one of five schools in a district of about 3,000 students.

At Discovery Elementary, a student extracurricular club called the P2 club was established in 2023 following the observation of the positive impact that intermediate students can have on primary students’ behaviors. Rebecca Reyes, school counselor at Discovery Elementary, noticed how much of a difference it made in a kindergarten student’s behavior when Deanna Loyear, the school psychologist, used a 6th-grade student mentor. The kindergarten student became more motivated to make positive changes, looked forward to seeing his mentor at the end of each day to share how things went, and enjoyed playing with him after earning his weekly goal for good behavior.

One of the other reasons the P2 club was created was to provide students who may be more introverted or unmotivated with an opportunity to RISE into a role that can spark their creativity and strengthen their character strengths. The goal was to provide students with more opportunities, and it has. The P2 club, open to 4th- to 6th-grade students, has high expectations for its members: good attendance, good behavior (following school-wide expectations), maintaining passable grades, and fulfilling their roles.

With these expectations, we have noticed a positive change in students which has allowed members who may have had behavior problems to make a difference for themselves and to shine bright by demonstrating the school-wide expectations of R.I.S.E. (respect, integrity, self-control, and empathy), and being able to incorporate their character strengths, such as kindness and leadership, to impact their school culture positively.

One of the significant roles the P2 club students first engage in is helping primary students at recess and teaching them the school-wide expectations on the playground. As members take on roles like these, they can demonstrate their strengths and do more within the club, such as becoming student mentors and group helpers to model respectful play and teach one-on-one behavior expectations. They show that small moments matter. These simple acts of empathy and inclusion reflect Discovery’s RISE values in action. Students use what they have learned in their Positivity Project Lessons and incorporate that with the P2 club.

Learning Through Leadership

Through collaboration and positive examples, P2 club members learn leadership by doing. They take responsibility, practice patience, and model problem-solving in real-life moments. A demonstration of this is even within the group members who have been part of the club since it was created, as they teach new members the club’s expectations and what it has to offer to help them grow as leaders themselves. Allowing students to help each other and demonstrate their ability helps them build confidence and communication skills while showing others that respect and teamwork guide every interaction. We have had students in P2 Club tell us how much they enjoy it and how they like the opportunity to be a leader on campus and mentor other students. We recently held a Positivity Project Showcase in which our P2 Club students were represented on the student panel and held great discussions. They truly show the Other People Mindset.

Extending the P2 Spirit: Kindness, Friendship, Self-Care, and Standing Up Together

Discovery’s P2 Club leads campus-wide events that celebrate connection and care. Each event created has come from student-led ideas and what they want their peers to engage in. The events they have created that have been huge successes include World Kindness Day, a Self-Care Fair, and Friendship Week. Before World Kindness Day, students worked together to write appreciation notes to staff and peers to further display that with kindness, they can prevent anti-bullying behaviors together. This even encourages students to show positive behavior and receive the school-wide token economy of R.I.S.E. bucks to purchase a kindness gram to send.

Friendship Week brought fun recess activities, such as creating friendship bracelets that highlighted the character strengths they saw in each other and working together with other students to build a school-wide gift, a Lego Discovery Space Shuttle. These activities further fostered new connections across grades.

Students also came together to create a school-wide event, the Self-Care Fair, to help them learn and practice different coping strategies (mindfulness, self-regulation, relaxation) in preparation for end-of-year testing. For the Self-Care Fair, each student was in charge of running their booths and helping teach peers in lower grade levels or from their classrooms about different coping strategies.

As a school, we are looking forward to our students coming up with other event ideas to help our community. These events show that, by incorporating and strengthening their character strengths, students are living the RISE motto, Respect, Integrity, Self-Control, and Empathy, which is something Discovery students do every day.