Campfire Conversations Elevate: A Process to End the School Year or Journey

This article is adapted from Ted's Smart Thinking podcast episode 378: Campfire Conversations Elevate: A Process to End the School Year or Journey.

Every year, it happens the same way.

The school year winds down. A project wraps up. A season comes to a close. And then... we throw a luncheon, say our congratulations, and move on. No real ceremony. No intentional reflection. Just a handshake and a paper plate full of pasta salad.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially as we approach the close of the 2026 school year. Because here's what I know after decades as a teacher, coach, and leader: the most powerful learning of any journey almost never happens during the journey. It happens at the end, when we finally stop long enough to ask, “What did we actually just go through?”

The problem is, most of us never stop. And if we don't stop intentionally, the wisdom gets lost. The growth goes uncelebrated. And the people who ran through the storm with you walk away not even knowing how strong they got.

Today, I want to introduce you to a leadership practice I call campfire conversations, and I want to make the case that you need one before your next ending.

You Don't Know You're Overcoming a Challenge While You're in It

Let me start with something that took me a long time to really understand. You don't know that you are overcoming a challenge while you're in it. You only know when it's over.

Think about that for a second. Sometimes you have actually accomplished your objectives and you don't even know it. You're still sitting in the stress, the uncertainty, the noise of the journey, and you've sold your mental real estate to the doubt. You haven't closed out the narrative.

That is a real leadership and human problem. Because if the people on your team, in your school, or on your staff don't know they overcame something, they can't carry that confidence into the next storm. And there's always a next storm.

Remember, every leader has influence over others, whether that is intentional or accidental. Every decision you make is shifting the direction of the people around you. So when a journey ends, you have a profound opportunity to use that influence to elevate everyone who made the trip with you. The question is whether you take it.

A Story About Starlink, Strangers, and the Power of a Fire

A few years ago, my daughter Grace and I went camping near Estes Park, Colorado. We had spent the day hiking, returned to camp exhausted and happy, and were settling into our favorite part of any camping trip: the evening around the fire. Firewood is the one thing I will always splurge on when we camp. Not gear, not food, not beer (though that's sometimes a close second). It's firewood, because I know that fire is where the real magic happens.

That night, as the stars began punching through the black Colorado sky, we heard a commotion from campsites down the mountain. People were chattering, pointing up, asking each other, “What is that? Is that a UFO?” Grace and I looked up and saw a long, bright, fast-moving train of lights streaking across the sky. It looked like a freight train in space. I'll be honest: I was a little freaked out.

Someone nearby yelled, “It's the Russians, it's the Russians!”

But then something incredible happened. The campfire did what campfires do. It drew everyone in.

Like a moth to a flame, I followed the small crowd gathering at a nearby site, where a woman was calmly explaining what we had just seen. She was knowledgeable, composed, and fascinating. What we saw was a new set of Starlink satellites, freshly deployed from a SpaceX launch, still flying in tight formation before drifting into their permanent orbital positions. And then her young son looked around at all of us and said, with total pride, “My mom made those.”

She was a SpaceX engineer. She had come to that exact campground to watch her satellites fly over.

We all grabbed extra firewood and pulled our chairs closer. A SpaceX engineer, a Meta programmer, a tool maker from the aviation industry, a nurse, a woman who worked in brewing, an educational leader (yours truly), my daughter, a professional mountain biker. The strangest group you could imagine. And for hours, that fire held us together. We shared hikes, restaurants, life advice, and stories. The satellites brought us together with a shared experience, but the campfire bonded us.

So why aren't we doing that for the people we work with every single day?

What a Campfire Conversation Actually Does

Here is what I mean when I talk about campfire conversations. I mean safe, fun, not rushed conversations with the people who battled alongside you, shared the mission with you, and got through the hard stuff together.

The human brain is constantly trying to answer two questions: Who am I in this situation, and what are the rules? Status and structure. These are neurological needs, not preferences. And yet, at the end of a school year or a long project, how many people on your team still don't know where they stand? How many are wondering whether their contributions mattered, whether their decisions made sense, whether anyone noticed what they gave?

A campfire conversation is designed to answer all of that. Done well, it does four things at once.

It elevates mindset by giving people a chance to see how far they've actually come. It increases predictability for what's next, because shared reflection builds shared language. It grows empathy by helping people understand the journeys others were on beside them. And it celebrates progress, even when the destination wasn't quite reached.

How to Build One: The Four-Step Process

Here's how to make this real. I'll give you the full process, and then I'll give you the prompts to bring it to life.

Step one: Set the conditions. You've got to create the campfire environment. I'm a fan of using Sterno fire pit gels, small cans you can light safely indoors or outdoors, combined with s'mores ingredients to actually set the scene. But if that's not your setting, grab a YouTube campfire video for a laptop screen, build a paper campfire in the center of the table, or find a way to create a “campfire feel” in whatever space you have. The physical cue matters. It signals that this is different. This is safe. This is not a meeting.

Step two: Disrupt the usual groups. One of the biggest mistakes in facilitated reflection is letting people sit with their usual crew. I am a firm believer in disrupting social microcultures in order to build a macro culture. Just like that campground in Colorado, where none of us would have found each other if the satellites hadn't given us a shared experience, you have to engineer the moment. Build teams of diverse thought, diverse experience, and intergenerational perspectives. Assign a camp counselor to each group whose job it is to run the site and keep the conversation moving.

Step three: Use prompts, and share the leadership. Prepare envelopes, one per participant, each containing one or two prompts. The instruction is simple: the person who opens the envelope is the first to answer. This matters. If you always let the fastest processor set the tone, you will always hear from the same people. Shared vulnerability is the whole point.

Step four: Collect and celebrate the wisdom. Don't let any of it disappear. Use sticky notes. Post the key questions around the room. Ask everyone to write one insight per note and stick it up. Then take photos, scan them into a PDF, and drop them into an AI platform to convert them into shareable text. Capture everything. The wisdom in that room deserves to outlast the conversation.

The Prompts That Open People Up

Here are the reflection prompts I recommend for closing out a school year, project, or journey together. Use these to dig into the shared experience.

What was our single biggest breakthrough or aha moment, and what triggered it? Think back to a moment when things weren't going according to plan. How did we handle that pivot as a team, and what does that say about us? What was the most unexpected challenge we encountered that wasn't on our radar, and how did we overcome it? If you could go back and rewrite one specific decision or one specific day, what would it be and why? What is one thing a teammate did, no matter how small, that completely saved the day or made our lives significantly easier? Looking back over the journey, describe something you grew through that will make you stronger next year. And if you were in charge, what is one thing you would make sure we never had to do or experience again?

Now, if your goal is not just to reflect on the work but to actually understand each other better as human beings, I have a second set of prompts for that.

What was your very first job, no matter how small, and what is one lesson from it you still use today? If we visited your hometown for 24 hours, where would you take us to help us understand who you were at 17? Is there a story your family tells about you that perfectly captures your personality as a kid? What is a sliding door moment in your life, a time you almost took a completely different path? What is a subject you are an expert in that has absolutely nothing to do with your current job? And what is the biggest difference between how you solve problems today versus how you solved them earlier in your life?

These questions do something remarkable. They remind us that the people we work alongside every day are full human beings with histories, scars, and stories we have never heard. And when we hear them, we become a different kind of team.

The Campfire Call Out: Celebrating Each Other Out Loud

The closing move of any campfire conversation is what I call the campfire call out. And here is the key: people share the wins and growth of others, not themselves.

Here is how it sounds. “I want someone to share a way in which someone else at their table overcame a significant hurdle and how they did it.” Then you start naming names. “Jean Marie, during the middle of this project, figured out a way to...” “Jason, halfway through the year, discovered something that changed how we all approached...”

When this works, and it always works, you get recognition. You get celebration. You get shared wisdom. You get people understanding the contributions of their colleagues, perhaps for the first time. You get individuals finally knowing their status, their standing, their value to the herd. You get all of the things that a healthy culture is built on, in one conversation, around one fire.

This Isn't Just for Leaders. It's for Everyone.

Teachers, I want to say something to you directly. You watch the growth of children and young adults through an entire year of their lives. Three seasons. Fall, winter, spring. You see them struggle and stumble and eventually stand taller than they did in September. And too often, the school year ends with a celebration instead of a conversation. Those kids deserve to hear, in their own words and in the words of their classmates, what they actually went through and what it says about them.

You don't need Sterno flames in a classroom. (Please do not do that.) But you do need the envelopes, the prompts, the social engineering, and the shared call outs. Give your students a campfire. They need to know where they stand.

And parents, this applies around your actual dinner table too. The end of a school year, the conclusion of a sports season, the close of any shared chapter: these are campfire moments. Don't let them pass without lighting something intentional.

Your Smart Thinking Challenge

Here is what I want you to do this week. First, list the teams, groups, or classes in your life that would benefit from a campfire conversation right now. Second, if you are already closing out journeys with your people, describe how you do it and what is working. And third, if you are not doing it, ask yourself honestly: why not? Then pick a date and put it on the calendar.

Every individual chapter of our life comes to an end, but the journey is never over. We need to process what we just experienced with the people who experienced it alongside us. That is how we learn, grow, and walk into whatever storm is coming next with a little more courage and a lot more herd behind us.

So let's close this year out right. Let's light some fires, elevate the people around us, and make sure everyone knows what they are capable of. Because the next storm is already on the horizon. And this time, we're going in together.

If you found this helpful, please share it with a leader, teacher, or colleague who is wrapping up a journey right now. And if you're interested in going deeper, I'll be at the Smart Thinking Conference this July. There are still a few seats left. Please register here.