My Inspiration

Now, I can hardly remember a time when I did not know and love the Iditarod.  I cannot imagine not  looking forward to it the first Saturday of March, the much-anticipated day the race starts each year.  I do not want to even think about not having this "real life connection"of what my students are reading to something "really cool" which is actually going on in our own country, but admittedly representing a life-style very different from our own.  I cannot imagine not following the race with my students, as it is one of their very favorite things all year--mine, too.

 However, if I reach way back about 15 years, I remember a dear, dear teacher in the classroom next door to mine, Mrs. C.,  who started  talking about the Iditarod about mid-February.  She is a math teacher, and I am math-challenged, so at first I actually thought she was talking about a math term!  Then, she would excitedly say, "The Iditarod is coming!  The Iditarod is coming!"  Finally, my curiosity got the better of me, and I admitted my ignorance and asked her to tell me what on earth she was talking about!   When she told me, with great enthusiasm, that it was (and is) a 1,000 mile journey across Alaska via dogsled, and sprinkled in some wonderful anecdotes about the adventures mushers--people who drive the dog teams--have, I was hooked.  The same day, I did a little research about the race and its history and soon remembered we had copies of Jack London's The Call of the Wild in our language arts storage room.  I literally ran to my department chair with the idea of having my students read this classic, which centers around using dogsleds for transportation during the great Gold Rush,  while following that year's Iditarod in real time via the Internet.  She approved it, and one of the most effective teaching tools I have used to date was born.

It was interesting that my younger daughter was in upper elementary at the time in, and her class was also following the race, so I was able to adapt some of the activities her class was doing for my older students, and my cousin, who was a Media Specialist in an elementary school in Oregon, was also using it as a tool to get students excited about reading.

All of these pieces came together to result in making my English class suddenly interesting to students who formerly would probably not have thought of English as even near their favorite.  There was a whirl of excitement and activity every morning as all of my students would hurry into my room to  check the race updates (published on the Internet by the Iditarod Trail folks in Alaska) and move the "sled" of the musher each student  was "following" across our giant map of the route across Alaska we had posted in our room.   This is one of those things which make teaching magical...to see students really connecting with a subject being taught.

I wish you could meet Mrs. C. someday. As shown in the photo above,  I caught up with her  recently so I could tell her about my upcoming trip to Alaska, and she could give me a book she had brought back from her last trip there.  I could not believe it when she opened to the author's inscription to both herself and to me, which he had done at her request.  Two teachers who share a bond, a love of something which worked in our classrooms and taught us endless life lessons in the process.  Thanks, Mrs. C.; you opened a whole new world to countless students--and to their grateful teacher and your student, me!