Building a P2 Culture at Groton Elementary

This article was written by Adrienne DeForrest. Adrienne is a School Social Worker and P2 Leader at Groton Elementary School in Groton, New York, part of the Groton Central School District, where she has helped lead the school’s Positivity Project implementation from its earliest days.

Starting Small with Daily Slides

At Groton Elementary School, we have worked hard at slowly building our P2 community. We began by simply utilizing the P2 slides and digging into the 24 character strengths on a daily basis for one school year. We also did a schoolwide project, where each student created a quilt piece naming their top character strength. This quilt has since been done at the start of every school year and hangs all year long in our hallway.

Staff quickly became excited about this and decided to purchase P2 t-shirts to wear every Monday, all school year long. This turned into purchasing crewneck sweatshirts so it could still be expressed in the cold New York months.

Character Cash and Assemblies

In addition, we turned our school store into a “character cash store.” Students earned character cash by displaying P2 character strengths and were given the chance every Friday to spend their hard earned dough. The store is run by our 5th grade building leaders who exhibit leadership, respect, kindness, and the Other People Mindset.

From there, we implemented our assemblies, awarding students who displayed P2 strengths on a daily basis, or perhaps grew in an area and the teacher wanted to give them a shout out for working really hard on self-control. That same leadership team that runs the school store also runs our community food drives to help serve our local food pantry and those in need.

Creative Celebrations

The leadership team also heads up a door decorating contest a couple of times a year. Our most recent door decorating contest had criteria such as this: your class must use teamwork to create a snowman that holds a character strength name and must have more than four colors for creativity. We had doors named Humorous Harry, Perseverant Pete, a whole wintry Kindness Farm, and a Star Wars theme where the lovely princess fought off Vader with snowballs filled with character strengths.

Student Projects That Deepen Learning

Our 5th grade classrooms completed a living wax museum project last month. Each student researched an individual who left a historical mark on our society. Within their research, they had to name what Positivity Project character strength that individual exhibited and how it helped them obtain greatness and built their character.

This project showed just how deeply students have internalized the P2 language. Students connected historical figures to strengths like perseverance, bravery, and love of learning. 

P2 Is Our Culture

We started small, with one slide per day, and we have reached a school community culture that naturally builds P2 into its everyday language, practice, and without even thinking, sprinkles it into research projects and hallway doors. Students let words like integrity roll off their tongue and carry themselves with pride throughout our building every single day because P2 is our culture.

What makes our P2 journey special is that it grew organically. Each year, staff and students found new ways to weave character strengths into the life of our school. Initiatives were not forced; each one built on the excitement of the last. That steady, student-centered momentum is what turned a set of daily slides into a culture that defines who we are as a Groton Elementary community.