A District 20 middle school continued a years-long partnership with a local television journalist last week, bringing students face-to-face with the realities of navigating today's media landscape. KRDO13's Josh Helmuth returned to Chinook Trail Middle School for the fifth straight year, leading an assembly on media literacy for eighth graders last Friday.
The session covered how students can identify misinformation and disinformation, the risks posed by artificial intelligence, and how to think critically about what they encounter and share on social media. The assembly also addressed the First Amendment and the role of trustworthy journalism in the community.
The visit was not a standalone event but the opening chapter of a larger classroom initiative. Helmuth's appearance launches English teacher Luke Anliker's My News Network class, in which students work in teams to select a United Nations goal — such as ending hunger or protecting the environment — and then build their own news websites, podcasts, and broadcasts centered on that topic. Local journalists provide feedback on the students' work, and judges select winners whose projects are featured on the District 20 website; those students also earn a personal tour of the KRDO13 newsroom and studio.
Anliker has described the project as a strong success, and the program appears to have built genuine momentum over its five-year run. Students arrived at the assembly prepared, bringing what Helmuth described as strong questions to the session.
The partnership between the school and the local station represents an ongoing effort to connect professional journalism directly to classroom instruction in Colorado Springs. Whether additional schools or grades will be incorporated into the program in future years has not been announced.