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Teacher on the Trail™
Engaging lessons based on Insider video clips.
Our four-legged correspondents write for all ages.
Collection of all things Iditarod.
Latest Teacher on the Trail™ Posts
In hindsight, this question was a really meaningful one to ask this year, given all of the changes due to Covid. I presented it to some of the mushers over the summer, long before the route was changed to the “2021 Gold Trail Loop”. Given what we know now, I’m sure many of them …
Monday, March 15th Over the weekend I watched several videos of the Northern Lights that were posted on the Insider and I also took a look at some of Dave Poyzer’s amazing photos on the Iditarod Photo Gallery page https://iditarod.com/photo/. Based on what I saw, it seems like there has been an extra …
Sunday, March 14th As Martin Buser said in a recent Facebook post, the next stretch from Nikolai to Skwentna will be just like Mr. Toad’s Wild ride! There are many unknowns on the return trip, and mushers need to be prepared for anything. Here are the current standings (according to the Iditarod GPS tracker) …
Tails from the Trail…. I was recently able to catch up with Samantha, one of the two teachers in Nikolai. Iditarod 2021 is definitely different for everyone. See what Samantha has to say about life in Nikolai! What is it like to be living and working in Nikolai? Nikolai is a small Native village, only …
Saturday, March 13th Since it’s the weekend and all of my students are home, the trail reporting will look a little different for the next two days. Instead of video reports from my students, I will be typing up some of the most recent developments in the race. However, on Monday we will go back …
Friday, March 12th Who is winning? This is probably the most common question and one that I get every day, usually as soon as the students walk in the door. For my third graders, it makes the most sense to use the GPS and updated standings on the Insider to determine who is …
Thursday, March 11th As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about Iditarod vocabulary and terminology, another common point of confusion for my students comes with some of the more common language used throughout the race. We have had many class discussions about different homonyms like the bib “draw” and “scratching”. No, mushers do not …
Wednesday, March 10th There is always a big learning curve with regards to the vocabulary associated with the Iditarod. The quantity alone of race-related terminology can be overwhelming, not to mention the added challenge of pronouncing the names of certain checkpoints and even some of the mushers themselves! In my classroom, we always …
Tails from the Trail…. Remembering Nikolai Being the 2020 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail was an amazing honor. My time out on the Iditarod Trail was an experience that I will never forget. As the mushers make their way into Nikolai, it reminds me of my stop there. Nikolai is the first of many native …
Tuesday, March 9th Every year I read the stories of Balto and Togo to my students in order to introduce them to the sport of mushing and the history of the Iditarod trail. The picture that both stories paint of the blizzard is so powerful that it always seems to stick with the …