Since 2022, North Royalton City Schools has been intentionally building a strengths-based culture. Through a partnership with the Ohio Strengths Collaborative, in collaboration with the East Central Ohio Educational Service Center, Dr. Jim Mahoney, and RedBrick Hill, the district began implementing the CliftonStrengths® assessment to help students and staff discover and apply their natural talents.
At the heart of the work are 34 unique strength themes that fall into four domains:
Executing: strengths like Achiever, Responsibility, Discipline, and Focus that help individuals turn ideas into action.
Influencing: talents such as Communication, Woo, Command, and Significance that help people speak up and inspire others.
Relationship Building: themes including Empathy, Positivity, Developer, Harmony, and Connectedness that strengthen teams and culture.
Strategic Thinking: strengths like Learner, Input, Intellection, Analytical, and Strategic that help individuals process information and plan for the future.
In 2022, district administrators were the first to take the assessment. For a full year, leadership teams engaged in professional learning, coaching sessions, and embedded strengths activities during meetings. The goal was to build a shared language and truly understand how their own Top 5 themes shape how they lead, communicate, and make decisions.
Rather than focusing on deficits, the district committed to a strengths-based model: identify talents, develop them intentionally, and apply them daily.
Even today, strengths conversations are part of district-level meetings. Leaders recognize, for example, when someone is leaning into their Communication to rally a team, their Analytical to break down a challenge, or their Woo to energize a room. The language has become part of the culture.
Expanding to Students: #BEARstrengths at North Royalton High School
In 2023, North Royalton High School launched the #BEARstrengths Leadership Group as part of the Ohio Strengths Collaborative. What began as a pilot quickly gained traction, with more than 100 students joining the inaugural cohort. Today, approximately 70–80 students per grade level are involved, and interest continues to grow as students seek out the program after hearing about its impact from peers.
After completing the CliftonStrengths assessment, students explore their Top 5 themes and reflect on questions such as:
How do my strengths show up in the classroom?
How do they influence the way I lead?
How can I use them more intentionally?
Each month, students deepen their understanding of strengths such as Achiever, Empathy, Communication, Learner, Responsibility, Positivity, and others across the four domains of Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. Conversations move beyond awareness and into action—how to apply strengths to leadership opportunities, school culture, and community engagement while aligning with the district’s “BEAR Way” mindsets of resilience, kindness, integrity, and mindfulness.
One of the clearest examples of strengths in action at the high school was their Strengths Olympiad that happened last year.
The idea originated from teacher leaders who wanted to recognize students committed to the program for the entire year. Junior and senior Strengths Leaders then took full ownership of the planning process. They surveyed participants, designed events, created scoring systems, organized rotations between gyms and outdoor fields, secured supplies, and managed logistics across multiple lunch periods. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the event ran as a fully student-led field day—complete with PBIS and strengths-based incentives.
Beyond school walls, Strengths Leaders are also beginning to expand their reach into the community, with plans to grow partnerships with local senior citizen centers and lead intergenerational activities. The overarching goal of #BEARstrengths is simple but powerful: to make a bigger impact on the school and the community as a whole.
Being a Strengths Leader sets students apart. Participants gain experiences that extend beyond a typical extracurricular activity. They lead underclassmen, collaborate on school-wide initiatives, organize events, and engage in community outreach—all while learning to articulate their strengths and leadership style.These experiences provide meaningful examples for resumes, scholarship applications, and college essays.
The long-term vision is to expand the initiative so that the entire North Royalton High School student body completes the strengths assessment in the coming years. As participation grows, strengths conversations will become embedded into the school day, including within Bears Den periods, where students will intentionally plan, reflect, and apply their talents.
Intentional Work at North Royalton Middle School
At North Royalton Middle School, the rollout has been developmentally intentional.
The work currently centers on eighth-grade WEB (Where Everyone Belongs) leaders, who complete the assessment and identify their Top 3 strengths. Through guided reflection activities, students examine how their strengths impact them as leaders and how they can more purposefully use those talents to influence school culture, especially in supporting incoming fifth graders transitioning to middle school.
Each WEB meeting includes strengths-based reflection:
How does my Empathy help others feel welcomed?
How can my Responsibility or Achiever help set the tone?
How can my Communication or Positivity create belonging?
Teachers who have been selected as Team Coordinators at each grade level have also completed the assessment and engage in monthly activities to evaluate how their combined strengths impact their teams and the entire school. This spring, the full middle school staff will take the assessment for the first time, expanding the shared language even further.
North Royalton City Schools is among a small number of districts in Ohio implementing strengths-based leadership and learning in this comprehensive way, beginning with administration, expanding to educators, and now reaching students at both the middle and high school levels.
This work aligns directly with the district’s commitment to the district’s vision of identifying individual needs and providing comprehensive supports. By helping students identify whether they naturally think strategically, build relationships, influence others, or execute plans, the district is equipping them with tools that extend far beyond graduation.