Leading-edge technology is the last thing you’d expect to find in a small rural school, nestled in one of the most isolated towns in the American West, but if that town were Shoshoni, you’d be surprised.
The advanced offerings in computer science, web design, HTML, video production, and 3D printing are impressive at Shoshoni High School. The driving force behind these innovations is Fremont County School District Database Coordinator Joshua McCoy.
McCoy never expected to be a teacher. His career path was purely IT, the type where interaction takes place through programming and report generation.
The Wyoming Department of Education is overloaded with hundreds of reports from the state’s 48 school districts, and it’s people like McCoy who gather, message, and deliver that data in a constantly changing demand from the WDE.
McCoy is from Bellingham, Washington. He has a degree in Computer Networking Technology from Bellingham Technical College.
He had an 11-year tenure in IT as an application support specialist and a dBase and SQL programmer.
“I worked in Washington and Idaho,” McCoy said. “I was IT support at a hospital, too.”
Teri Turner was the longtime Shoshoni SIS (Student Information Systems) manager. She worked with Infinite Campus through Computer Information Systems. (CIC)
Turner moved on in 2020 and McCoy took over the position.
“It was right before COVID,” McCoy said. “It was rough. I was doing school reports through Infinite Campus.”
His position took another turn with the retirement of Shoshoni IT Manager Tony Olson.
“My second year I took over junior high STEM. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) I focused a lot on programming.”
He worked with the students in Python, a visual programming language that is easy for younger students to master.
He’s now teaching classes for the 6th and 7th grade and a section of high school students. McCoy has a PIC (Professional Instruction Certificate) certified by the WTSB (Wyoming Teaching Standards Board).
He has eight students in his high school STEM class. A class as varied as the students in it.
Senior Michael Wilczewski took full advantage of McCoy’s instruction in HTML to create a Dungeons and Dragons Rule Set.
“He really ran with it,” McCoy said.
“I haven’t been playing D&D,” Wilczewski said. “But I’m passionate about it.”
The job market in the digital world is the fastest growing on the planet, especially for English-speaking Americans in a global market filled with outstanding competition from every corner of the planet.
Wilczewski, Slate Fike, and Tyler McFarland are all active in his STEM class.
“All of those guys will go into the computer world,” McCoy predicted.
Video production, web-based with YouTube distribution, is popular as well.
“I could see Travis McFarland and Miguel Elder-Avalos going into video,” McCoy said.
Another growing trend is online gaming, not gambling, but interactive role-playing, competitive gaming.
Travis McFarland was sitting on a stool in front of a large, high-definition gaming monitor playing his avatar, Spiderman, in an Esport game of Marvel Rivals.
The guys who collected Marvel comic books as youngsters and early teens are well represented in the IT world today. The next generation, with the arrival of Hollywood blockbuster Marvel films with characters like the Hulk, Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men, is just a few steps ahead on the digital creation evolutionary ladder.
“They play a lot of X-Men and the Avengers,” McCoy said of his Esports team. “We were one game short of going into the playoffs last year, and we missed a day of competition because of a scheduling issue. Colleges are throwing a lot of money at Esport scholarships.”
“I think it’s really cool that even in a town like this, we have a team,” Travis McFarland said. “It’s really awesome.”
McFarland is already an accomplished digital video developer. He has a couple of videos published on his YouTube channel. He is a musician as well, playing guitar and keyboard.
“I want to go into film production,” McFarland said. “I like comedy.”
McCoy continues his work as a database manager, a full-time job for many, but his career has expanded into the classroom.
Part of that classroom contains an impressive array of 3D printers. They were dutifully working away with spools of plastic cord, almost magically changing into custom-designed projects as they whirled away on the shelf.
“I’d like to get a metal 3A printer,” McCoy said. “But those are very expensive.”
The world is a big place, and living on the edge of the Great Wyoming Desert in a crossroads town like Shoshoni used to mean limited opportunities, but not for the students at Shoshoni.
The world comes to Wranglerville on a fiber optic cable or by invisible signals from distant places.
The CTE programs available for the 100 or so Shoshoni High School students and their younger brothers and sisters are truly amazing.
Cutting edge on the edge of the Owl Creek and Copper Mountains.