Christian Pellatz grew up 10 miles outside the unincorporated community of Bill, Wyoming. Unofficial population: 11.

He attended Dry Creek Elementary School, a rural two-room school through 8th grade, with one other student in his class through fifth grade; he was the only student in his class in the sixth through eighth grades.

Like his peers from Bill, Pellatz rode a bus about 35 miles each morning to get to Douglas High School in the comparatively large town of Douglas. Population: 6,351.

Certain experiences only happen to rural schoolteachers.

When Brooke Johnson, 35, taught at Slack Elementary, a one-room schoolhouse in Parkman, near Ranchester, a goat who lived next door often stood on the school’s porch and peered through the window, waiting for recess when the children would come out and play. Other times, Johnson and her students chased neighborhood cattle off the playground and back into their pasture before they could play hide and seek.