GEE! HAW!! WHOA!!! What does that mean? Well, students at San Cayetano can sure tell you! They have been studying the 1,150 mile Iditarod Dog Sled Race, and they can tell you not only the meaning of those commands but all about Alaska, the individual mushers, and the history and rules of the race. Students and teachers each chose the musher they thought was going to win this year and “became” that musher for the entire race, getting to know the musher’s life history and charting progress made at each checkpoint. By using the website www.Iditarod.com, students were able to get up-to-the-minute details of the entire race, including video footage of what was happening each day on the trial. The campus was filled with anticipation, excitement, and a sense of friendly competition as students and staff cheered for their chosen mushers. To further enhance their study, San Cayetano was recently visited by Wrightwood musher Robert Stradley and his two sons, Trent and Talon, who shared their knowledge of the race and their personal racing adventures. Students rotated through a series of stations which included: exploring equipment used by mushers, grooming nine of Stradley’s sled dogs, creating musher t-shirts, making their own lead dogs from socks filled with rice, learning the positions of a dog team and practicing the commands while pulling a dog sled. So although Alaska is miles away from Fillmore, the students of San Cayetano felt like they were right in the heart of the race, enjoying every minute of their Iditarod experience!

For more information about Robert Stradley and his programs, you can visit his website www.adventurequestinstitute.org.