The Cody High School Broadcast Journalism program has produced a news piece on how a six-student school in Wyoming is surviving. The report was a collaboration with PBS Newshour Student Reporting Labs. The collaboration has professional journalists help to guide students in their reporting and producing.
Erika Quick, the teacher advisor for the Cody High School broadcast program, said her students were trying to find a story for the lab's series, "Opportunity in America."
"My students felt like being in Wyoming, we're in this rural area and a lot of time we don't have access to these kinds of opportunities," she said. "We started questioning smaller schools and our ruralness of Wyoming."
Plus, she said it gave the students real-world experience.
"They actually really got to see the long hard days that go into journalism," said Quick. "I don't think that they realized sometimes how much work goes into a story."
They focused on Valley Elementary School, which is located in Cody. The one-room schoolhouse is 100 years old and currently only has six students. The piece finds one reason these school houses have hung on might be Wyoming's focus on equity in education.