In Pueblo High School’s Room 100, people won’t find just any classroom. In fact, it’s the only classroom of its kind, not just in Tucson Unified, but across southern Arizona.
Room 100 is the home of 98.7 The Block – a high school radio station fully run and managed by students.
Each period, a new class of students walk in and get to work – perusing through latest news to write their script for their assigned segment that day, creating song playlists, creating on-air games to play, and more.
It’s the type of class that inspires students to want to go to school, specifically at Pueblo High School.
Anthony first heard about the class from his dad on a drive home from school his freshman year at Desert View High School. He was already considering transferring schools – and the conversation about Pueblo’s radio class really piqued his interest.
Now, a junior at Pueblo, Anthony is considering pursuing radio as a career.
“I think radio could be a pretty big future for me,” Anthony said. “It could be something I work on well in the future.”
Because The Block runs all day and can be heard by not just students at Pueblo, but anyone in the community, Broadcast Journalist and Radio teacher Sarah Wilson believes she has more buy-in from her students compared to regular subjects. Wilson would know, she started her career at Pueblo as an English teacher before taking over her current position.
“In English, they sometimes just throw something on paper to turn into you because they know you’re the only one who’s going to read it,” Wilson said. “This is very different. They know people are going to hear it. Even if there’s just a few people listening, all their peers are going to hear them say it.”
Having that performance aspect is what changes the students’ approach to writing the segments and put more effort into research and curating playlists.
Overall, Wilson views the class as a vessel to teach confidence, goal setting, dealing with stress, and other real-life issues, like how to recover from an embarrassing performance.
“I feel like those things are so much bigger than just writing an essay,” Wilson said.
