A lesson about lessons and getting outside our comfort zones

I have written in the past about the many unexpected things we can learn about subjects other than what a news story is actually about. About Roberts Rules of Order, say, in a story about debates at a local government meeting. Or historical trivia related to a recipe in a Food story. Or how air currents and ocean temperatures change in a story about butterfly migration. An endless number of lessons, really.

Today, I write about how unexpected lessons can form the central theme of news events themselves, and the lesson we all can take when that happens.

Specifically, I commend to your attention Eric Peterson’s Page 1 story last Friday about the conclusion of a six-week training program in the Hoffman Estates Fire Department for people with disabilities or special needs. The program, which the department titled the Fully Involved Fire Academy, was an expansion of sorts on its existing Citizens Fire Academy, which provides hands-on activities to help residents better understand the operations and practices of firefighters. For, by “fully involved,” the department wasn’t referring just to the lessons a community outreach program can impart, it also was referring to who the lessons were for — the entire community.

In that context, I appreciated why our editors were drawn to play the announcement of the program on June 27 across the top of the front page. It is a unique project worthy of note to a community audience and something that residents and authorities might have some interest in reproducing or modifying for their own towns. I was less sure, I admit, about whether such a specifically targeted program in a single suburb merited such prominent play with a second story at its conclusion.

And then, I read Peterson’s lead (or lede, as we journalists for some reason often like to misspell the word describing the opening paragraphs of a news story):

“Hoffman Estates’ inaugural training experience for young people with special needs was so well researched that its instructors learned only one thing over its six weeks that they didn’t know at the start.

“ ‘It made a greater impact on the fire department than the members of the academy,” said Lt. Kurt Lichtenberg, the department’s public education officer who came up with the idea a year ago for the Fully Involved Fire Academy. “It’s a good reminder of why we signed up for the job.’ ”

In that simple quote, Lt. Lichtenberg both summarized the spirit of firefighters everywhere and, perhaps more important, described how we all can grow when we embrace unfamiliar experiences.

That lesson about lessons is something worth taking to heart.

The 22 students of the inaugural FIFA class no doubt got exciting opportunities during their six-week training that could help them understand how emergency personnel work and remain safe if they ever find themselves in a fire.

But, their enthusiasm and courage in taking on something they’d never done before or even, as some participants said, considered doing before, was a lesson of its own.

“You left your comfort zone,” Lichtenberg told the students at their graduation ceremony.

It is also true that the firefighters themselves left theirs. And that, he said, “made us better firefighters by being around you.”

We read newspapers and listen to informational media to learn about our communities and our world. Isn’t it interesting — deserving play on the top of Page 1 even — to see how much else we can learn, whether from news stories or in the course of our everyday lives, by moving outside our comfort zones and letting unfamiliar people and unfamiliar experiences teach us something important?

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.