Why I Teach: Natalie Kirkpatrick Believes in the Journey

Every August, before students return to campus, Renbrook faculty and staff gather for Opening Meetings and the beginning of a new school year. Among the planning, preparation, and conversations about the year ahead is one of our most cherished traditions: two faculty members are invited to reflect on a simple but meaningful question.

Why do you teach?

For Natalie Kirkpatrick, Renbrook’s Director of Athletics, the answer kept bringing her back to one word: Journey.

Her journey has crossed an ocean, changed directions more than once, and taken her places she never expected. But looking back, Natalie can see how each experience prepared her to become the teacher and coach she is today. And perhaps more importantly, it taught her what it means to be the person who sees a child’s potential and says, “Yes.”

The Child Who Was Given a Chance

Natalie grew up in England, where some of her earliest school experiences came not as a student but while tagging along with her mum, who worked at another school. When their school holidays did not align, Natalie spent her days at her mum’s school. At first, she played with the children at recess and watched the teachers. As she grew older, she began helping in classrooms. She was seeing the work of teaching from behind the scenes.

Teachers did far more than stand in front of a classroom. They planned, organized, encouraged, problem-solved, supported children, and somehow kept everything moving. Natalie loved it. She just did not think she wanted to become a teacher.

Sports, however, were another story. She loved being active. She loved competing. She loved being part of a team. And, as Natalie tells it, she was also very small.

Being the smallest child in her class meant she was sometimes overlooked when trying out for teams. That experience taught her early that she might have to work harder, prove herself, and create opportunities when they were not automatically offered. But what Natalie remembers most are the adults who did give her a chance. The teachers and coaches who looked beyond her size. The people who saw something in her that she might not yet have seen in herself. The ones who said yes.

“When you’re the kid who gets overlooked, you remember the person who finally said yes. You remember the person who sees your potential before you do.”

Today, that memory shapes the way Natalie approaches every student and athlete at Renbrook.“I want to be the teacher who says yes,” she shared. “I want to be the teacher who notices the student who might otherwise be overlooked.” Because sometimes one person believing in a child can change the way that child sees themselves.

Teaching Without Knowing She Was Teaching

Natalie went on to study sport and leisure management at university, still without imagining that education would become her career. Yet the clues were there. During her first year, she was elected captain of her university’s third netball team. In her second year, she captained the first team. By her final year, she was club captain.

Somewhere along the way, she also acquired the nickname “Mummy Russell.” At the time, Natalie assumed it was because she was organized. Looking back, she recognizes something more.

She organized practices. She encouraged teammates. She mentored younger players. She celebrated their accomplishments and supported them when things went wrong. She looked out for people and helped them become better. She was already doing much of what great teachers and coaches do. She simply did not know it yet.

When the Journey Goes Off Course

After university, Natalie’s journey brought her back across the Atlantic to the United States. Starting over in another country was exciting, but also difficult. The people, places, routines, and small familiar things that make somewhere feel like home were suddenly gone.

Eventually, Natalie found herself sitting behind a desk working at a hedge fund. There was nothing inherently wrong with the job. But something was wrong for Natalie. She had spent her life moving, competing, coaching, leading teams, and working with people. Now she was sitting behind a desk wondering how she had arrived there. Her journey had taken a wrong turn.

So she returned to the thing that had always felt like part of who she was: sports. Natalie went back to school and earned her master’s degree in physical education from Manhattanville College. Suddenly, the seemingly unrelated pieces of her life began to fit together.

The child who had spent school holidays watching teachers.

• The undersized athlete who learned to work harder.
• The team captain.
• The mentor.
• The coach.
• The young woman who crossed an ocean and had to learn how to start again.

Each experience had been teaching her something.

Finding Her People Through Sports

Natalie would experience another move and another new beginning before eventually finding Renbrook. This time, when she needed to create a sense of belonging in an unfamiliar place, she turned once again to sports. She joined a tennis club. There was just one small complication. She had barely played tennis.

But the club gave her far more than a place to learn a new sport. It gave her somewhere to go. It gave her people. It gave her something to belong to. Slowly, a new place began to feel like home.

“That’s what sports can do,” Natalie reflected. It is also at the heart of what athletics can mean for students at Renbrook. A team is not simply a place to learn how to dribble, serve, shoot, run, pass, or score. Athletics offers children opportunities to discover their strengths, work through challenges, learn to lead and follow, experience success and disappointment, support others, and understand what it means to contribute to something larger than themselves.

For some children, a playing field, gym, court, or trail may also be where they first discover an ability they did not know they had. Where someone notices them. Where someone says yes.

Walking Alongside Our Students

When Natalie eventually arrived at Renbrook, she found more than a job. She found what she had repeatedly needed throughout her own journey: community.

“I found a family,” she said. “I found a community of people who support each other, of people who care. People who want you to succeed. People who challenge you to be better. People who want you to be the best version of yourself.”

Her journey had not always followed the path she expected, but it had taught her resilience. It taught her to adapt. It taught her to be open to change. And it taught her the importance of having the right people by your side when things do not go according to plan. That realization brings Natalie back to the reason she teaches.

Because teachers and coaches can be those people for their students.

Every day, educators have an opportunity to step briefly into someone else’s journey. They can notice the child who feels overlooked. They can say, “I know you can do this,” when a student is not yet sure. They can challenge, encourage, celebrate, and sometimes push a child a little further than that child thought possible. They can help students discover something about themselves they did not know was there.

“Our students are on their own journeys too,” Natalie shared. “And for a little while, we get to walk alongside them.”

More Than the Score

That philosophy is fundamental to Renbrook Athletics. Winning matters. Competition matters. Developing skills matters. But none is the ultimate measure of the experience. The greater opportunity is helping young people develop confidence, resilience, teamwork, responsibility, commitment, leadership, and a willingness to keep trying when things are difficult.

Those lessons matter on the field. They matter even more when students leave it. As Natalie reflected, teachers cannot know exactly where their students’ journeys will take them. They do not know the careers children will pursue, the challenges they will encounter, or the successes they will achieve.

What educators can do is give them something to carry. Confidence. Resilience. Curiosity. Kindness. The belief that they are capable of more than they think. Maybe, Natalie says, a teacher can become the person who makes a difference in a student’s journey, just as someone once made a difference in theirs.

Being the Person Who Says Yes

Looking back at the little girl in England spending her school holidays at her mum’s school, Natalie could never have predicted the path ahead. She could not have imagined moving across the Atlantic, changing careers, returning to school, starting over in new communities, becoming a teacher, or ultimately leading an athletics program at a school in West Hartford, Connecticut.

But maybe, she says, that is the point. “We don’t always know where our journey is taking us.”

Sometimes the experiences that appear completely unrelated are preparing us for something we cannot yet see. Sometimes unexpected turns teach us more than the path we originally planned. And often, the people walking beside us make all the difference.

So why does Natalie teach?

“I teach because I believe in the journey. I believe in helping young people find their strengths. I believe in giving them opportunities to discover what they are capable of.”

Most of all, she remembers the people who once believed in her. “I remember the people who said yes to me, and I want to be that person for someone else.”

At Renbrook, teaching does not happen only at a desk, and learning does not happen only in a classroom. It happens in gyms and on playing fields. On trails and courts. During practices and competitions. In victories, mistakes, challenges, conversations, and second chances. It happens whenever a child discovers, perhaps for the first time, I can do this. And it happens when an adult sees possibility in that child and gives them the opportunity to discover it for themselves.

Natalie’s journey brought her to Renbrook. And now, she has the privilege of helping our students discover where their own journeys might lead.