It is the first day of school and you have a classroom full of students you probably don’t know. What stories do they have? What burdens do they carry, and what is important to them?  As teachers, we want to get to know our students intentionally so we can start to build relationships. We need …

Right from the start, your students need to know they have walked into an Iditarod classroom. But they may not know much about the Iditarod.  You could, of course, tell them all about it, which would not be a wrong instinct! What if we combined self-directed learning about the Iditarod using the go-to source, the …

Holding back tears, I put my oldest on the bus for her first day of Kindergarten; the neighborhood moms laughed at me, joking that by the time this day arrived for my third child I’d be sending her off gladly, toasting to my newfound freedom. I was indignant – thinking I would never feel that …

Change is hard. It is also the one true constant in life. Although we often wish to hang onto the present, the comfortable, the expected, the known –  it is inevitable that time will pass, and we will need to adapt to new seasons, people, places, and situations. Change can be monumental, like adjusting to …

When I returned home from the 2023 Iditarod multiple people asked, “What surprised you the most about your time in Alaska?” I know they expected comments about the cold, or the wildlife, or the dog teams. My actual answer isn’t flashy or shocking. The biggest surprise was the vastness of the remote Alaskan wilderness. Imagine …