BENSON, Arizona (KGUN) — Forrest Watson owes his passion for education to the people who helped him grow. Now he is determined to make a positive impact on the next generation.

Watson’s teaching career began in Colorado, but a cold winter forced Watson, now 30, and his family to move to Arizona. Beginning in 2022 and before the 2023 school year, Watson taught at Amphitheater High School in Tucson for four years. He decided to leave his classroom for an administrator role and ended up at Benson Elementary School. Watson said he wanted to move to the administrator role because he wanted to have more influence at school.

“I didn’t want to be associated with just the students I coached or the students in the classroom. I wanted to be associated with the entire school,” he said.

For Watson, part of his passion for teaching comes from working with children every day and seeing their positive growth every day.

“In my view, every student has the potential to achieve great things, and educators just need to find that potential,” he said.

As Vice Principal, Watson handled disciplinary matters and that was how he met students. Watson said he noticed a lot of good things going on at school, and that many students he hadn’t met were excelling in the classroom, so he came up with the idea of ​​asking the students to do morning classes. The idea was to have the announcement read.

Mr Watson said: They are young and need to learn from their mistakes.”

Each week, two students from each grade are selected to be part of the video. They are selected by teachers based on their behavior and performance in the classroom. Now Watson can’t walk around campus without being asked by a student when he can appear in a video.

School senior Max Homerski was named Video of the Week and says he doesn’t get nervous when he’s on camera.

“I like everything[Watson]does,” said Gomersky. They are always so much fun and he always helps us grow as good students. “

Third-grade teacher Barbara Furnas says the incentive to appear in the video improves classroom behavior as students seek out the opportunity to read the presentation. She also said Watson greeted each student in the morning as she allowed them through the school gates with a smile and a high five.These small gestures are the right thing for a student to start her day. instill a way of thinking.

Furnas says that positivity not only affects students, but staff as well.

“I think it’s a breath of fresh air for the staff to have him here because he brings positive influences from them as well,” she said.

Watson wants to continue building relationships with students, staff and the Benson community. He says that having a relationship with them builds trust and can have a positive impact on the school and the students.