Top Step Firefighter 

March 5th & 6th, 2026
San Rafael, CA

Program Overview 

This course is designed to give fire fighters the skills to promote positive culture in the fire house. A culture that promotes leadership, professionalism, operational proficiency and goal setting. In the fire service we have a gap in our career development once we get off probation. As an industry, we don’t have a defined process for making the top step fire fighter. This course will start the groundwork for how we should be thinking, preparing and protecting the culture of the Top Step Firefighter.

Day 1: AM Classroom

• Top Step Mission/Tailboard size up

Day 1: Afternoon In the Streets

• District recon & building breakdowns.

• Scenario walkthrough & prefire planning.

Day 2: AM Classroom / PM: HOT

• Defining culture.

• Prop building and design

• Drilling based off prefire scenarios.

• Making this career a practice

Firefighters will walk away with a framework for getting off the rig and being able to make initial actions on scene based off priority. They will have the tools to practice deliberately and build positive culture for the fire service. The Top Step is an organization of thoughts and methods that we have derived from The Nozzle Forward methodology, Military indoctrination and past experiences.