Photo courtesy of Travis S., subject to a Creative Commons license
Did you know that Saturday, March 1, marks the ceremonial start to the 36th Iditarod?
Known as the “Last Great Race,” the Iditarod is a race across the beautiful yet rough terrain of Alaska. Covering more than 1,150 miles, mushers and their dogs cross frozen rivers, dense forest, rocky mountains, desolate tundra, and windswept coast in anywhere from 10 to 17 days. Running the Iditarod means enduring subzero temperatures, snow storms, wildlife encounters, and other unexpected difficulties.
The Iditarod begins with a ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage, Alaska. Mushers and their teams race to Eagle River, Alaska. The next day, the race restarts in the rural town of Willow. Before 2002, the restart was held in the Matanuska Valley at Wasilla, but warmer winters, less snow, and tremendous development in the area have led race officials to make the change each year. In 2008, officials announced that the Willow restart would become a permanent change in the face of global warming and continuous development. Also changed is the first leg – traditionally spanning 18 miles from Anchorage to Eagle River. From 2008 onward, the first day of the race will cover only 11 miles.The Iditarod web site has an interactive map that shows the route and also marks the positions of the mushers throughout the race.
The Iditarod alternates between two routes. This year, as in all even years, will follow the northern route through the villages of Cripple, Ruby, and Galena. Odd-numbered years follow the southern route through Shageluk, Anvik, and the ghost-town of Iditarod. Alternating routes decreases the impact of the large numbers of press and volunteers needed for the race and allows additional villages to participate.
History of the Iditarod
photo courtesy of ra64; subject to a Creative Commons license
The Iditarod trail was historically used as a mail, supply, and gold route from coastal towns such as Seward and Knick to the interior mining camps of Flat, Ophir, and Ruby. The trail continued to the west coast communities of Unalakleet, Elim, Golovin, White Mountain, and Nome.
The Iditarod trail became famous in 1925, when a diphtheria epidemic threatened the community of Nome. A dog sled relay transported life-saving serum from Anchorage to Nome.
The Iditarod race has been run yearly since 1973. Always an important event to Alaskans, it has gained international popularity through competitors from Canada and Scandinavian countries, extensive press coverage, and the inclusion in classrooms around the world.
Why Teach about the Iditarod?
Even if you aren’t in Alaska, the Iditarod makes a great addition to your teaching practice! Teaching about the race is an opportunity to incorporate geography lessons, map skills, science concepts, and literacy skills into a real-world context. And there’s no denying the appeal of hundreds of hard-working, lovable dogs to children and adults!
Photo courtesy of Flauto; subject to a Creative Commons license
Additionally, the common practice of having each student follow a musher through the race provides invaluable practice in reading expository texts (newspaper accounts) and using the real-time data available online.
Incorporating the Iditarod race can meet standards in a variety of content areas. We’ve highlighted some of the science, English language arts, geography, and social studies standards that you might fulfill while teaching about the race.
National Science Education Standards
Life Science Content Standard: Organisms and Environments (K-4) ; Populations and ecosystems (5-8)
Science in Personal and Social Perspectives Content Standard: Changes in environments (K-4); Populations, resources, and environments (5-8) (Read the entire National Science Education Standards online for free or register to download the free PDF. The content standards are found in Chapter 6.)
National Council of Teachers of English/International Reading Association Standards
Standard 1: Read a wide range of print and nonprint text to acquire new information.
Standard 3: Apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate text.
Standard 4: Communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
Standard 5: Write and use different process elements.
Standard 6: Create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
Standard 7: Conduct, research and gather, evaluate and synthesize data.
Standard 8: Use a variety of technological and informational resources.
Standard 12: Use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes.
Standard 1: How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information.
Standard 4: The physical and human characteristics of places.
Standard 12: The process, patterns, and functions of human settlement.
National Social Studies Standards
People, Places, and Environments Strand: Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of people, places, and environments.
Teaching the Concepts
photo courtesy of EDubya; subject to a Creative Commons license
The official Iditarod web site offers many resources for educators, including lesson plans and activities. We’ve highlighted some of these, plus others from Scholastic’s Iditarod web page
. Education World also devotes an entire page to integrating the Iditarod across the curriculum.
Geography and Map Skills
Following the race lends itself well to teaching map skills such as the compass rose, cardinal and intermediate directions, and map scale. A lesson plan from the Iditarod site, Which Way to Nome? , focuses on these types of skills. Additionally, Scholastic has interactive maps of the trails used in even- and odd-numbered years. Simply posting a large map of Alaska and the Iditarod trail in the classroom can provide a context for teaching and practicing geography and maps.
Weather
The changing conditions along the trail can provide the basis for inquiry-based activities about weather. The Iditarod Teacher Resources web page provides links to StormReady, curriculum materials for teaching about severe weather and safety. Another lesson plan, How’s the Weather?, combines math and science as students graph temperatures along the trail.
The Alaskan Environment (Integrated geography and science)
The Iditarod trail travels through a variety of environments: mountains, forests, rivers, tundra, and coastline. As the mushers encounter these new environments, students can learn about the plants and animals that live there, and the unique challenges posed by each.
Young Mushers
The Junior Iditarod is an annual 140-mile race that attracts 14- to 17-year-old mushers. It is held in Alaska a week before the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Students can read about this race and young mushers at Scholastic.com or from the Jr. Iditarod site.
Sled Dogs
Learning about the training and care of the sled dogs is a high interest topic for many students. Scholastic features an interview on the subject with mushers Martin Buser, Mitch Seavey, and Gary Paulsen as well as articles on sled dog nutrition, training a champion sled dog, and animal rights activists’ objections to sled dog racing. All articles are appropriate for use with upper-elementary students. Making an Idita-rockis a craft suitable for all elementary students.
Global Warming
In the past six years, warmer winters and a lack of snow have consistently challenged race officials. Snow has been trucked into Anchorage to create suitable conditions for the ceremonial start, and the restart has been moved from the town of Wasilla to Willow. These two changes are concrete examples for students of how Alaska’s climate is changing, and can serve as the basis for inquiry into why this change is occurring.
Technology Resources
The Iditarod web site also includes many technological features that are appropriate for use with students. Zuma’s Paw Prints is a student-friendly blog written from the perspective of four sled dogs: Zuma, Gypsy, Sanka, and Libby. Another feature, the Iditarod Insider, requires a subscription and features videos, trail fly-bys, and updated race content. Scholastic’s Iditarod web site includes many articles and interactive features. Most are suitable for use with students.
Literacy Connection
The Iditarod provides a wide variety of opportunities for literacy instruction and integration. We’ve highlighted a few ideas here, but don’t let these limit your creativity!
Many teachers have students adopt individual mushers and track their progress through news articles and online resources. This ongoing assignment integrates reading comprehension (reading the newspaper with adult assistance) and visual literacy skills (using tables, charts, and maps). The lesson plan Timeline involves creating a timeline to track the progress of an individual musher.
Students may also create a “musher scrapbook.” This scrapbook could include student-produced work such as a short biography of the musher and hand-drawn illustrations or media objects such as articles clipped from a newspaper or found online, and pictures.
Teachers of younger students may want to select one musher to follow as a class. Students can track progress on a large map displayed in the classroom. Students (or the class as a whole) could write and illustrate a story detailing the musher’s adventures along the path to Nome.
Some teachers and schools use the Iditarod as a reading challenge. Often dubbed the IditaRead, the challenge involves students taking the place of mushers. Students read a prescribed number of pages or minutes per day to advance to the next checkpoint along the Iditarod trail. An IditaRead can be designed as a contest or just a fun way to encourage students to read consistently. Many ideas for an IditaRead, such as this interactive version, are available online.
Writing assignments can also be part of an Iditarod unit. Scholastic includes an online tutorial to help upper-elementary students write persuasive essays on how sled dogs are treated. The Iditarod Teacher Resources page includes a lesson plan and hints for teachers who want their students to write letters to mushers.
Suggested Reading
Booklists are available from both the Iditarod and Scholastic web sites. Rather than duplicate their work, we will simply direct you to their comprehensive and categorized lists! As always, your media specialist may be able to suggest additional titles for use in your classroom, or you may already have your own favorites.
Professional Development Opportunities
The Iditarod also presents several opportunities for professional development. Most prestigious, of course, is to be selected as the vTeacher on the Trail. This teacher spends about 3 ½ weeks during race time in Alaska as a member of Iditarod’s educational team. He or she visits schools, presents programs, and flies from checkpoint to checkpoint during the race, reporting to classrooms all over the world via the Internet. Applications for the 2010 Teacher on the Trail are due December 1, 2008.
If you’re not the next Teacher on the Trail – don’t worry! Iditarod’s Education Department presents two yearly conferences – one the week before race time and one during the summer. (This summer’s conference is June 22 to 28, 2008.) Field trips, authors, Iditarod speakers and mushers provide opportunities to learn about raising and training sled dogs, running the Iditarod, and materials to incorporate these topics into your classroom. University credit is available.
Back to You
What about you? Do you have a favorite lesson plan or activity about the Iditarod? Please post a comment- we’d love to hear from you!
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Until next time, stay cool with this hot topic!
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[…] February 27, 2008, 4:54 am | info@teachertube.com (mathletics): […]
[…] Jessica Fries-Gaither had an interesting blog post (The Last Great Race: Teaching the Iditarod).Here’s a small excerpt:Scholastic features an interview on the subject with mushers Martin Buser, Mitch Seavey, and Gary Paulsen as well as articles on sled dog nutrition, training a champion sled dog, and animal rights activists’ objections to sled dog … […]
[…] Bella’s journal wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptCovering more than 1,150 miles, mushers and their dogs cross frozen rivers, dense forest, rocky mountains, desolate tundra, and windswept coast in anywhere from 1 0 to 17 days…. […]
The Iditarod is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org. Please don’t hype this barbaric race to children.
Here’s a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race’s early years. In “WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod,” a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, “All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill.”
Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. “Sudden death” and “external myopathy,” a fatal condition in which a dog’s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson’s dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
“They’ve had the hell beaten out of them.” “You don’t just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.’ They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying.” -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno’s column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, “I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that “‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.’” “Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective…A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective.” “It is a common training device in use among dog mushers…A whip is a very humane training tool.”
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in “culling” or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. “On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don’t pull are dragged to death in harnesses…..” wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska’s Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, “He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death.”
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn’t anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals’ best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse. Please don’t promote this horrific race to children.
Sincerely,
Margery Glickman
Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org
Yay for the Iditarod! I am very happy that you mentioned the Junior Iditarod too because it really needs to be noticed more. As a Junior Iditarod Finisher I am very happy to see more talk about it!
Hello,
This is a great page. Thanks.
Our school district is along the Iditarod Trail, and each year provides free mushing resources, lessons, and live race coverage from our Student Broadcast Team, and annual IditaProject to schools around the country.
In fact, Rick Holt - the rookie musher featured in the current Discovery Channel series on last year’s race - worked in our office, and helped us get this project started seven years ago
Last year we had over 8000 students involved, and we expect to have even more this year. Everything we do is free, and our content is all Creative Commons licensed (Open Content)…images, video, audio….lessons…everything.
We have a group of teachers and administrators working this week on expanding our Open Content thematic unit page, and will be categorizing links by age / grade level, and subject area as we go.
Thanks for the excellent article along the same lines of helping teachers organize the wealth of resources out there about the Iditarod, and about mushing in general.
John
John: Thanks for the comment! I’m planning on posting about the 2009 Iditarod, and would love to highlight your resources. Thanks for using Creative Commons!
I love watching the annual Iditarod race…….thanks for posting this excellent article.
[…] The Iditarod is an exciting basis for an interdisciplinary unit blending geography, language arts, math, and even art. For more ideas on creating an Iditarod lesson or unit, see our blog post, The Last Great Race: Teaching the Iditarod. […]
I am a dog musher from Anchorage Alaska, and I would like to clear up a few of the facts Margery Glickman stated in her comment.
First of all, the percentage of dogs that die in the Iditarod is not nearly as much as the percentage of household pets that die everyday due to starvation, being hit by cars, neglect, etc. Out of the 52 million pet dogs in the United States, 6.2 million die every year due to the above mentioned causes. Thats 12 percent. Out of the 1088 dogs that started the 2009 Iditarod, 6 died. Thats only 0.6 percent.
The injuries that occur in the Iditarod are no different or worse than the injuries in any other major race. In the 2008 Boston marathon, paramedics treated over 900 runners in their medical tents. The injuries included: 3 heart attacks, dehydration, hyponatremia, hypothermia, sprained muscles, tendonitis, contusions, stress fractures, and much more. Any sporting event will show the same statistics – many injuries occur.
In 2009, 505 dogs (out of 1088) didn’t finish the race. That’s 46%. Just because 46% of the dogs don’t finish the race, doesn’t mean that all 46% dropped out due to injury or other causes. Out of the 505 dogs that didn’t finish the race, 256 were on teams that dropped out of the race all together. A large majority of the dogs are taken out of the race because the musher is stopping for their best interest. If a dog team is not strong enough to complete the race, a musher will drop out for the sake of the dogs. The dog musher’s primary concern is the health and safety of their dog team.
Average lifespan of a pet dog is about 12 years. Average lifespan of a sled dog is 14 years. This is proof that sled dogs are very well cared for throughout their life, and receive the best treatment possible. This is what allows them to have such a long lifespan.
You mentioned the use of a whip. Not many mushers use whips, but for those who do, the whip never comes in physical contact with a dog. The use of the whip is to create a noise which the dogs are trained to respond to, just like if a musher were to yell a command at the dog. The dogs are not afraid of the noise – the cracking noise the whip makes can be compared to the whistle a person uses to train hunting dogs.
A musher is not allowed to pass through a checkpoint until the dogs are checked over by the veterinarians. All of the vets along the race course are so skilled and well-trained that they can spot injuries by watching the way a dog acts. There are multiple vets at each checkpoint, so when a dog team pulls in, it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for the vets to completely check over the entire team.
Most mushers chain their dogs using a 10 to 12 foot chain, which gives the dogs a 112 square foot area to run in. The average dorm room size (for 2 people) is 228 square feet. Thats 114 square feet per person. A 112 square foot area provides plenty of room for a dog to run around in. Dog yards are also chained in to prevent animals such as wolves and bears from getting in.
Colonel Tom Classen was quoted in the comment, however, I have no idea why his opinion is qualified on the subject of dog mushing. Sure, he is a long time Alaskan resident, but he has no history with dog mushing or any sled dogs at all. He is an air force Colonel, not a veterinarian.
Mushers do not race the Iditarod for “fortune.” The cost to raise, train, and care for a competitive 16-dog Iditarod team for just ONE year is between 150 and 200 THOUSAND dollars. The winning prize in 2009 was $69 thousand. Mushing is a very expensive sport, and no dog musher makes a profit off of it.
Please don’t judge dog mushing until you can actually see sled dogs at work and see how much they love to do what they do. The “Sled Dog Action Coalition” that Margery Glickman mentioned is based out of Miami, Florida. I’m not sure how anyone from Miami can have any real knowledge about dog mushing.
I have been helping my 13 year old son do a paper on the sled race. I found the information to be quite confusing on the part of the animal activist. My son had to choose whether or not the dogs were being abused and defend his answer. My son is writing his paper in support of the race stating that the dogs are NOT being abused. I asked him his own beliefs and then we worked from there to support his beliefs. Comments like Glickman can be very distracting and seem to be over exaggerated. Don’t get me wrong, I do like to see data and where it comes from. I have not found those numbers that are claimed in Glickman’s comment, but I will keep looking. Everywhere that my son and I have looked says basically the same thing (Glickman’s comment was the first one we ran across that said anything drastically different than what I’m about to say right now). I found in my research that since 1973, only 120 dogs have died. I also found that every year there is roughly a thousand dogs per race. So my son and I did some basic math. 37,000 (est.) dogs in 37 years have entered the race. 120 of those dogs have died. When the rubber hits the road, that’s not very many. Consider your local animal shelter. How many animals have they put down in 37 years? How many animals in your area have been hit by a car? How many animals in your area have been abused and neglected? I would guess way over 120 in a 37 year time period. I also have not found any information that states that the “race” or the “mushers” caused those deaths. what I would like to know is how many died because of abuse? How many died due to old age? or accident? or wild animal attack? I love Hannah’s comment and would love to know where she got her information from. It would be a good place to start getting some answers my son and I have. He wrote in his paper that there are dangers in any sport if you are not trained well. There will always be accidents and people make mistakes. Not all Mushers beat their dogs to death or abuse them. It only takes one to shine a negative light on a wonderful thing.