Jim Watt stands next to a new two-color 3-D printer, with a few of its creations on top, that his students use in his STEM class on Friday. Watt is retiring at the end of this school year after teaching for 43 years and inspiring multiple generations of students. (Photo by Evan Houk)

LISBON — After 43 years of teaching science and inspiring multiple generations of students, David Anderson Jr. Sr. High School teacher Jim Watt is retiring at the end of this school year.

For 38 years of his career, Watt has called David Anderson home, where he currently teaches anatomy, biology, STEM One, and STEM Two. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and is a hands-on course that teaches practical applications for technology.

Watt took on the challenge of running the STEM program in 2013, with an emphasis on 3-D printing.

“When I started that program, it was a shot in my arm,” Watt said Friday. “It revitalized my interest in education because biology at that point had become stale.”

Watt gave credit to his students in the STEM program for their outstanding work and mastery of the technology.

“I’m teaching right now some of the brightest kids I’ve ever taught,” Watt said. “And I say that every year.”

Two of the STEM students, sophomores Lorraine Korda and Riley Tice, were recognized at the Lisbon Exempted Village Board of Education meeting last week for assembling a new two-color 3-D printer right out of the box –programming the device and writing code for it, and writing a detailed user’s manual so anyone can use it.

“The concept of STEM is I’m not the teacher, I’m a facilitator,” Watt said.

In STEM, students also work with drone technology, competing in county scrimmages, flying the drones through hoops and landing them on a target using only the drone’s camera.

“It’s fun. It’s cool,” Watt said.

The drone technology also has practical applications in the job market, he added, mentioning a student who opened their own business taking videos and photos, using a drone to get aerial shots.

Watt was also recognized at last week’s meeting for being chosen as the Outstanding Teacher of the Year for 2023-2024 by the Coalition of Rural and Appalachian Schools (CORAS), of which the Lisbon school district is a member.

Watt has also been bestowed with several Star Educator of the Year awards from the Columbiana County Educational Service Center during his tenure.

“These are very special to me because they are high-accolade students that nominate me,” Watt said. “That tells me that I’m reaching that high-accolade student.”

Watt grew up in East Palestine and graduated from Marietta College in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, along with teaching certifications.

After working at Marietta City Schools for three-and-a-half years and Liberty Middle School for one year, Watt was hired by Lisbon schools in 1985 and said it felt like “coming back home.” He said he was welcomed and supported from the moment he started and he now considers many teachers and administrators as friends.

It is also the close relationships with students and seeing them grow and progress through life that has kept him in education for so long.

“It’s the good student that’s kept me in education for 43 years. If they were all bad, I wouldn’t be here,” Watt said. “In my Advance Biology, I tell students, ‘look to the left, right, front, and back, you’re looking at a doctor, you’re looking at an attorney, you’re looking at the nurse who’s going to save your life.’ Year after year after year after year, we get them.”

He still stays in touch with several students, like a biomechanical engineer who is a senior scientist at a pharmaceutical company or a chiropractor in Alaska. Watt said he gets a Christmas card every year from former student and now fellow teacher, Meredith Deichler.

Watt coached track for 25 years and cross country for 25 years at David Anderson Jr. Sr. High School and got to know the student outside of the academic classroom, “which was very rewarding,” he said.

“You get to know the student on a personal level, coaching, not so much in the classroom,” Watt said.

He said he loves the hometown feeling of the school and the local community. For about half of his current students, he has had at least one of their parents in class. He also taught several current school employees.

“I’m on second-generation students now,” he said.

Even though he has three older sisters who are now retired teachers, Watt originally didn’t really have a notion to enter the educational field himself.

“While in college, I had an on-campus job in the education department and had no real intentions of becoming a teacher,” Watt said.

However, once he started working with students, he became more and more interested and decided to pursue teaching certification along with his science and psychology studies.

From a young age Watt has loved the outdoors, which led him into the science and biology fields. He said that in another life, he might have been a forest ranger or a wildlife officer, like many of his students have done.

“I’ve been outdoor all my life, hunting, fishing, hiking. I still do,” Watt said.

“All my students for decades will know this quote, ‘Mr. Watt’s perfect world of biology: we go outside every day, we dissect every day. It’s just not a perfect world,'” he said.

The first phase of retirement plans for Watt are to move to Argentina in about a year to be closer to his daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren.

“Everyone says ‘you’ll know when it’s time.’ And I know it’s time,” Watt said of retiring after 43 years of teaching and inspiring students.

“There’s all these warm and fuzzy feel-good stories of the successes. It’s not my success, it’s their success,” Watt said. “I just keep track of them.”

ehouk@mojonews.com