Word: Fire

Sentence:

Fire is the purpose that pulls us toward the people and places that need our care.

Passage:

I have always been someone who runs toward the fire. I am not sure where that started.

Maybe it started in sports. I loved the big moment. Bottom of the ninth. Game tied. The kind of moment where everything gets quiet and loud at the same time. I wanted to be the person with the game on the line.

Some of that was competition. Some of it was ego. Some of it was being young and believing I could will my way into the future I wanted. Back then, my dream was baseball. I wanted a college scholarship. I wanted to play professionally. I never made it there, but my love for the game carried me through college and taught me something about pressure, purpose, failure, and getting back in the box after you missed your chance.

Then I walked into a school for the first time, and I had no idea my fire was about to find a new place to go.

Twenty five years ago, I thought I was becoming a teacher because I loved English, stories, and kids. And I did. But that first group of students showed me something deeper. They gave me a clearer view of the world’s unfairness. They showed me how much pain some children carry before they ever sit down in a classroom.

I was not a therapist or a savior. I was a young teacher trying to figure out what to do with all the hurt sitting in front of me. But I could be steady and sturdy. I could show up. I could listen. I could keep my word. I could make my classroom a place where students felt seen, even if the rest of the world had already made up its mind about them.

That is when my spark was lit.

Over time, I began to understand that my fire was not really about being in the big moment. It was about being useful in the moments that mattered, and learning I did not have to do that work alone.

As I moved out of the classroom and into administration, I started to see another fire. Teachers were tired. Many felt unsupported, unseen, and alone in work that asked more from them every year. They did not need someone with all the answers. They needed someone reliable. Someone who followed through. Someone who would stand beside them when the work got hard and not disappear when things became uncomfortable.

Later, as a district leader, the fire shifted again. My work became about helping school leaders elevate their voices. I learned that policy always sounds different when you are the one expected to live it inside a school building. School leaders know where the policy bends, where it breaks, and where it needs to be better because they carry the impact of it every day.

At each stop, the fire kept teaching me.

In the classroom, it was helping students heal. In school leadership, it was helping teachers feel supported. At the district level, it was helping leaders be heard. Different roles. Different rooms. Different work.

But the fire was the same.

It was never just about running toward the crisis. It was about running toward the people inside it. That is the part I am still learning. Fire is not only the crisis we run toward. It is also the place where our gifts and our desire to help come together.

For me, that has always been people. Listening to them. Supporting them. Helping them see something in themselves or their work that they could not see yet. That is where I have found purpose. It has reminded me that life is bigger than me, and that whatever skills I have been given are meant to be used in service of something beyond myself.

I think all of us have that kind of fire somewhere. For some, it is building a business. For others, it is creating a marketing campaign, leading a team, solving a problem, raising a family, serving a community, or making something that did not exist before.

Fire lives where our ability and our desire come together.

It is what fuels us. It is what reminds us that we have something to offer. And if we are lucky, it pulls us toward work that makes us feel more alive and more useful at the same time.

Your Turn:

Where do your skills and desires come together to fuel your fire?

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