Headline: Elementary Teacher Inspires Students, Then Dies on RAGABRAI

During Bike to Work Week, I talked with my students about biking, and found that my fourth graders were very interested in this thing called RAGBRAI. So I decided to put that interest to work for me. To keep them reading independently toward the end of the school year, I set up this RAGBRAI bulletin board. I printed lots of RAGBRAI history from the website so they could read all about it. We read books about biking. I gave them fun reading logs to keep track of their independent reading. Then we started the bike ride across Iowa! The pictures explain it all.

Some of the pictures I printed off of the website, that I thought exemplified the spirit of RABRAI.
Banana costumes, people selling you stuff, hills

That bike (me) made it all the way across Iowa, through the overnight towns, where I had placed little pins.

When the fourth graders met their reading goal, and I made it across the state, we had a RAGBRAI party, where they got ice cream and certificates. Hopefully, some of them will remember this, and want to do RAGBRAI someday!