Westwood Middle School fourth grade teacher Kari Lawson was recently named one of three finalists from across the nation in the Iditarod Teacher on the Trail program.

Lawson said following an intensive application process, she was chosen to travel to Alaska this spring to see the beginning of the 2025 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race which will take place from March 1–16. The race will begin in Anchorage.

“The three finalists will be there, and (the program organizers) will choose one of us after the race to represent for next year,” Lawson said.

While in Alaska, Lawson and her fellow finalists will present at a teachers’ conference and work behind the scenes doing stats for the race as it starts. She will work from midnight to 6 a.m. the first night of the race to post race statistics for those following the race online.

“Each day, (the Iditarod website) has statistics that are entered – as far as how many dogs are in, speed, time all of that (data). They make a log every time there is new information,” Lawson said.

Dog sled races are not a spectator sport in the conventional sense like NASCAR or track and field races. Aside from the cold, the race covers 16 days through 1,000 miles of Alaskan backcountry. Spectators connect to the race through online videos and daily stats.

If Lawson is chosen as Teacher on the Trail representative, she will attend the 2026 Junior Iditarod race and be part of the race through to the end.

The representative will not ride along during the race — instead will bring the race to classrooms across the globe with videos and lesson plans so teachers can use the content in their classrooms.

That teacher will get a taste of the trail during a ceremonial start of the race.

“That day is a celebration of the race,” Lawson said. “The sled dog race was stated to preserve the sled dog culture. Because fans can’t watch all through the race because it goes through the wilderness, the Saturday before, (the ceremonial start) goes about 12 miles through (Anchorage). There’s fans all through town cheering. It’s a big celebration of the race.”

That day each musher will have a rider in the sled for just those 12 miles. The Teacher on the Trail will be one of the riders. The next day he or she will trace the 1,000-mile journey moving from checkpoint to checkpoint in bush planes.

Lawson and her husband, Dr. Charles Lawson, are former schoolteachers at one of those checkpoints, Skwentna, Alaska, in a one-room schoolhouse.

“We were teachers there in the 1999-2000 school year,” she said. “I became fascinated with the race. That was my first exposure to the race. I’ve followed it ever since.”

Lawson’s Westwood students are excited to learn about something so foreign as a dog sled race. She said it’s a great way to get students excited about school during the lull that happens in late winter-early springtime.

“Once I start sharing a little bit,” Lawson said. “The questions start coming and the excitement is there. I tell them I learn something new every year because they ask questions that I haven’t thought of before.”

The students do a reading challenge. Advancing their sled by completing reading assignments, the students race their favorite real-life musher to complete the race.     

This year is also the 100-year anniversary of the “Serum Run.” In January of 1925 Nome, Alaska saw an outbreak of diphtheria. The remote town (still currently inaccessible by car) had no way to get medicine to the town, so a dog sled relay was set up to transport the lifesaving diphtheria antitoxin. 

“Balto,” the story of the lead sled dog, was based on this event, and while the Iditarod race is not directly related to the story, the Iditarod course shares the portion of the trail with the Serum Run.

“This year it’s a really big deal because it’s been 100 years and that was an event that got worldwide attention,” she said.         

The Lawsons through their careers have taught at a range of different schools in Alaska. For three years the first time, and they returned to Kodak Island for two years.

“It is the same and different teaching in Alaska,” Lawson said. “In Skwentna, we were in literally a one-room schoolhouse. We had K-12…about 15 kids in the school.”

The husband-wife team were particularly suited for the task, Kari with an elementary education background and Charles a high school background.

The school in Skwentna shuttered due to not meeting state minimum enrolment after several students graduated. The Lawsons then moved to Wasilla where they taught at larger, more traditional schools.

On Kodiak Island, the Lawsons taught at a native village’s one-room school.

Lawson explained that while Alaska has public schools, the land area is so large with very remote places, many accessible only by plane, the state only funds schools with 10 or more students. In those places with fewer than 10 kids, students will sometimes attend virtual classes or homeschool options.

“One-room schoolhouses are scattered all throughout the state,” Lawson said. “But they are all public-school options.”

Lawson said the long nights were more of an adjustment than the cold while she was in Alaska.

“By the time Iditarod rolls around the days are getting longer,” she said. “Even though the snow is still on the ground the days are getting longer and it’s a really great time of year.”

Lawson said the dry cold is more tolerable there than what we see in Tennessee. But there was a lot of snow. That first year, in Skwentna, the town received 16 foot of snow that fell from September through early-May.

“Summers are glorious,” Lawson said. “Everything is green. Everything grows very fast because the sun is always up, and it never gets really hot.”

In the Lawsons’ five years in Alaska, they were out for “snow days,” not for snow but for power outages.

“Snow is just part of life,” Lawson said. “You have studded snow tires and the snowplows to clear the roads, and it doesn’t slow things down too much.”