For years, I’ve asked my students the same question.

“What is the kind of work that would make you want to get out of bed at three o’clock on a Saturday morning just so you could do it?”

They usually laugh.

Some think I’m exaggerating.

Others immediately start throwing out wild ideas.

But behind the laughter is a question I’ve come to believe is one of the most important questions we can ask.

Not, What do you want to be when you grow up?

But, What kind of life are you hoping to build?

I ask that question because I worry about children, especially gifted children.

They’re often good at so many things that the world is quick to tell them who they should become.

Doctors.

Lawyers.

Engineers.

Successful by every outward measure.

But I hope they pause long enough to ask a different question.

What kind of work feels like me?

For me, teaching has always been the answer.

Not because every day is easy.

Teaching is wonderfully exhausting. It stretches me, challenges me, humbles me, makes me laugh, and reminds me almost daily how much I still have to learn.

But even on the hardest days, I’ve never questioned whether this is where I’m meant to be.

Teaching has always been my ikigai.

Every year I have the privilege of advising our middle school’s Future City team. We meet after school once a week and several Saturdays throughout the fall, researching, designing, building, and preparing for competition.

One of my favorite parts isn’t the engineering.

It’s that many of the students are former Discovery students.

Officially, they come back to build a city.

Unofficially…

They come back to hang out.

And if I’m being honest, so do I.

One Saturday morning we were in my classroom surrounded by cardboard, paint, engineering notebooks, and half-finished ideas. Students were scattered around the room solving problems, debating designs, and trying to make impossible ideas work.

It was exactly where I wanted to be.

Out of nowhere, one of my sixth graders stopped what he was doing, looked at me, and said,

“Hey, Mrs. Sopko…I know what your ikigai is.”

I smiled.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “What is it?”

He looked around the room as though the answer was completely obvious.

“Well…you’re here on a Saturday morning.”

He shrugged.

“So it must be this.”

I laughed.

Then I told him he was right.

Teaching is my ikigai.

And I hoped he would someday discover his.

I’ve thought about that conversation many times since.

Not because I learned something new about myself.

I’ve known for a long time that teaching is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

What stayed with me was something much more meaningful.

A child noticed.

He wasn’t listening to a lesson about ikigai.

He wasn’t completing an assignment about purpose.

He simply watched an adult spend a Saturday morning doing something she genuinely loved.

That’s when something clicked for me.

Children don’t just learn from what we teach.

They learn from what we love.

That realization has changed the way I think about teaching.

If I hope my students will someday build lives they can’t wait to wake up to, then they deserve to see adults who genuinely love what they do.

Not because every day is perfect.

Not because we’ve figured life out.

But because purpose is visible.

Joy is contagious.

When children see an adult completely absorbed in meaningful work, they begin to understand that work can be more than a paycheck or a title.

It can become an expression of who you are.

Maybe that’s why I keep asking the same question, year after year.

“What is the kind of work that would make you want to get out of bed at three o’clock on a Saturday morning just so you could do it?”

I don’t expect third graders to know the answer.

Or sixth graders.

Truthfully, many adults are still searching.

But I hope they never stop asking.

Because I have a feeling that a meaningful life isn’t built by becoming what everyone else expects.

It’s built by discovering the work that feels unmistakably like your own.

And perhaps one day, one of my students will find themselves somewhere on a Saturday morning, completely absorbed in work they love.

I hope someone notices.

More importantly…

I hope they notice it themselves.

When have your students seen you light up because of your work?