Teachers and Iditarod enthusiast from three southern states (North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia) gathered in Asheville, North Carolina to feed their passion for Iditarod. Former Iditarod Teachers on the Trail™, Martha Dobson (2011), Cathy Walters (2009) and Terrie Hanke (2006) presented sessions that provided the attendees with a sled full of material to enrich classroom activities and general race knowledge. In addition three guest presenters offered sessions during the workshop.

Middle school teacher, Martha Dobson, opened the conference with a sort of rookie meeting session called “Meet the Iditarod.” Teachers heard about many facets of the race from dogs, mushers, and volunteers to checkpoints, Iditarod Air Force and veterinarians. Dobson provided a great deal of basic information about the race that she’s accumulated in her five years of working various positions on the trail. She also introduced a note taking activity known as a Bubble Map. For upper elementary and middle school students, it’s the beginning of learning note-taking skills. The Bubble map is a visual or graphic way to organize one’s thinking. Students in Dobson’s classes have learned to take notes through Iditarod.

Interspersed between sessions throughout the day were mini-breaks featuring songs using the Iditarod theme lead by Cathy Walters. Walters has paired oodles of fun familiar tunes like Three Blind Mice, Green Acres, 100 Bottles, Zippididoodah, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Bare Necessities with Iditarod based words. Her Pre-K students love the songs. Learning through music is fun and very engaging. The young Iditarod singers make trips to visit senior citizens and perform a whole concert of their Iditarod favorites. They also perform for the upper grade students at their school and for parent night. The conference participants also did the Electric Slide to Hobo Jim’s Iditarod song.

Later in the conference, Walters presented on how to build student, teacher, school and community relationships with Iditarod. Her pre-K students use The Last Great RACE for Character education. The acronym race covers Respect and Responsibility, Attitude, Compassion and Excellence.

Grand SLAM ETC. with Iditarod doesn’t refer to a bases loaded home run in baseball. Iditarod lends itself to all the subjects in the curriculum – Science, Social Studies, Language, Art, Math, Engineering, Technology and Character. Since serving as Teacher on the Trail™, Terrie Hanke has continued to volunteer for Iditarod in Communications and in writing the Eye on the Trail Blog. Hanke shared lesson ideas that cover every subject area. If there’s a lesson to be learned, Iditarod provides a real life application.

Hands on learning gave everyone an opportunity to look, listen and feel. Dave Lukosik, a retired dentist and sled dog enthusiast from Little Switzerland, North Carolina brought his dog team to the workshop. Lukosik’s team is made up largely of rescued Siberian Huskies but also includes some mixed dogs. One in particular showed German short hair traits that are often seen in the Alaskan Husky. Lukosik also shared technical information on different types of sleds and harnesses as well as “Urban” mushing opportunities with wheeled carts, bikes and scooters.

Dr. Bill Sampson has worked as a Trail Veterinarian for Iditarod since 2005. Sampson shared valuable information and statistics about sled dogs as well as the care Iditarod sled dogs receive. Before going to the trail, the canine athletes have extensive pre-race physicals including blood work, EKGs, joint mobility evaluations and general exams. It’s only the healthiest of the healthy sled dogs that race in The Last Great Race©. He explained the process of a musher dropping a dog at a checkpoint, the dog being in constant supervision and care of the veterinarians until the dog is returned to the musher’s handler in Anchorage.

Also included on the workshop agenda were science and math lessons. Mary Riddick, an eighth grade science teacher presented a lesson on Force and Motion. The Iditarod based lesson covering force, motion, friction and mass meets the North Carolina seventh grade science standard of time and distance. Martha Dobson highlighted math and science lessons from the extensive library of lessons located on the Iditarod Education Portal.   Jen Reiter and Linda Fenton created some of the activities shared by Dobson. Both have served in the Teacher on the Trail™ position.

To conclude the workshop, participants and leaders shared favorite classroom activities and the Iditarod traveling quilt project was shared.

 Attend an Iditarod Teacher Conference.  Learn more at this link:  http://iditarod.com/teacher/teacher-workshop-and-conference-schedule-for-2016-2017/http://iditarod.com/teacher/teacher-workshop-and-conference-schedule-for-2016-2017/