Frenchtown Rural Fire Department

by Jason Neal

In the fall of 2010, Lisa Simon and I co-facilitated a series of Reflect sessions with the Frenchtown Rural Fire Department. The sessions took place in conjunction with the department's annual recruit training academy. The recruits, in addition to practicing rescue procedures and fire-fighting techniques, were also learning about the history, traditions and values of firefighting—particularly those values represented by the points of the Maltese Cross: sympathy, gallantry, perseverance, loyalty, dexterity, explicitness, observation and tact. Wanting to put more emphasis on this part of the training, the fire captain saw an opportunity to generate good, thoughtful discussion by engaging Reflect facilitators.

In the first of four 90-minute discussions, we met with the eight recruits as well as the fire captain, and used a selection from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin to coax and provoke discussion about how we define our own values, how our values manifest in our relationships with others and in our vocations, and how we deal with discrepancies between our values and our actions.

A week later, in the second discussion, we used Bertolt Brecht's short poem "A Bed for the Night" to set up a discussion about the concept of perseverance. Much of the discussion examined perseverance as a value, exploring the ways it could be learned, cultivated and practiced to serve the work of the firefighters.

In the third week, the group read William Carlos Williams' short story "The Use of Force," which served to foster discussion about the concept of duty—particularly in the face of confrontation. The recruits speculated on how far they might go to help a stranger, especially one not too agreeable to being helped.

In the fourth and final discussion, we took up the concept of compassion by first reading Alden Nowlan's poem, "He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded." In the ensuring discussion the firefighters told their own stories about when they'd been called upon to be compassionate—on duty and off—and the group examined whether or not compassion was an instinctive quality or one that could be developed and honed.

All in all, these sessions stand out for me because they were so directly focused on subjects that were clearly important to the participants—the firefighters. Even when we were immersed in the picky details of a story or poem, I could see in their eyes that they found the discussion relevant. They found the comments and questions of their peers relevant. They had chosen a vocation of potentially great risk and little tangible reward, and they leapt at the opportunity to consider, express and at times debate the values inherent in their service.