Cookies for mushers

Cookies for mushers
Posted on 02/08/2024
Student helps make cookies"Over hill, over dale, we will hit the Kusko trail
As our doggies go mushing along
Mushing here, mushing there, down the river we will tear
As our doggies go mushing along.

With a haw, haw, gee, we will sing this melody
From Bethel to Aniak we go
To Whitefish Lake, the cookies we will take
As our doggies go mushing along"

Zach and Hunter KeefeThis year when Bethel’s Mikelnguut Elitnaurviat students performed their K300 song, they sang with extra energy, knowing that mushers from around the world were once again eating their cookies on the trail.

For many years, students would bake cookies to send off with mushers. After a hiatus of more than a decade M.E. School decided this year to bring back the tradition of baking cookies as one more way to celebrate their connection to the sport. The M.E. mascot is the musher, and students have long celebrated the sport with the song and an annual K300 reading race.

Students making cookiesClasses each picked a different recipe to bake. Students measured, mixed, learned about fractions, and sang while they worked. Second grade students wrote letters and poems. Students bagged up cookies with a copy of the K300 reading logs, the K300 song, and individual letters and poems, and staff delivered them to mushers at their pre-race meeting Thursday night. First grade teacher Zach Pleasant, who himself is a graduate of M.E. school, was one of the teachers passing out bags to mushers, including fellow M.E. graduates Pete Kaiser and Jessica Klejka.

Pete and Jessica talk to studentsAt a school assembly after the race, Pete and Jessica came back to their elementary school to talk to students and answer their mushing questions. Pete talked about the K-300 reading race as his first race. Jessica talked about her first trophies, the K-300 reading race trophies. They thanked students for the cookies, and then they joined in with the M.E. mushers in singing the K300 song:

"To stay ahead of the gale, I’ll eat my cookies on the trail
As our doggies go mushing along."

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