![Brian Hickox inspects a checkpoint along the Iditarod dog sled race path in White Mountain, Alaska. [Courtesy Photo]](https://www.SledDogCentral.com/ImageStore/Ap/April24_2019_Iditarod_Teacher_resize.jpg "Brian Hickox inspects a checkpoint along the Iditarod dog sled race path in White Mountain, Alaska. [Courtesy Photo]")
Brian Hickox inspects a checkpoint along the Iditarod dog sled race path in White Mountain, Alaska. [Courtesy Photo] - Weymouth, Massachusetts 
Weymouth teacher shares lessons from the Iditarod trail
Brian Hickox said being a “teacher on the trail” during the recent Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska has given him some unique critical thinking skills which he can impart to his students at Galvin Middle School in Canton.
“It’s a grueling and demanding race,” said Hickox, an English teacher and life-long Weymouth resident. “The race was started in 1973 by Joe Redington Sr. to honor the history of sled dogs and in which they delivered mail. He noticed a lot of people who lived in Alaska were getting rid of their sled dogs in place of snowmobiles. He wanted people to remember the importance of sled dogs.”
The Iditarod, or “the last great race on Earth,” symbolically stretches approximately 1,049 miles from Anchorage through the central portion of Alaska before ending in Nome, a small city near the Bering Sea.
“That is a symbolic number given each year to the race,” Hickox said. “The number 49 is symbolic of Alaska being the 49th state. The race is 1,000 miles give or take a little less.”
Hickox filed an application with Alaska’s Iditarod Education Department to serve as a teacher on the trail at the urging of his Galvin School colleagues.
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