Teacher creates prosthetic hand for elementary student

GLASGOW, Ky. (WBKO/Gray News) - A teacher created a 3-D printed prosthetic hand for a 4th-grade student.

Red Cross Elementary School STEAM teacher Scott Johnson designed, printed and assembled the prosthetic hand for Jackson Farmer.

“He’s got a skin tone rubber type hand that he can wear, but it doesn’t have a lot of functionality to it. He can’t actually grip things and whatnot,” Johnson said.

Johnson, who was the 2025 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, recognized the need nearly a year ago and secretly began designing the new hand.

“I made the initial file, and when the Back to School Bash came time this year, Jackson and his mom and his sister, they were here at school and I brought it out,” Johnson said. “I had printed it and had it in a Ziplock bag back here behind the STEAMlab table. So, I asked him. I was like ‘I made this, and I would like to make one for you if it’s cool.’ And I got his mom’s permission and stuff, and they were good with it, so I was like ‘Okay, I’m going to go forward with this.’”

Johnson designed the prosthetic with Jackson’s individual needs in mind, using feedback he received along the way to fine-tune each element.

“With this, this would give him the ability to use his own functioning wrist function to actually hold on. When he flexes his wrist down, it closes the fingers and hands around, and when he flexes it up, it widens his grip,” Johnson said.

Johnson is already working on a new design that will incorporate Farmer’s feedback from daily use, as well as planning for a future where Farmer can utilize the knowledge he’s gained from his STEAM classes to make his own edits to the design eventually.

“He’ll be at our school for, you know, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, so over the years, as he starts to grow, we can reprint this. We can actually scale up the file, make it larger, and keep outfitting him for some time. Even when he leaves me and goes to Barren County Middle School or beyond,” Johnson said.

According to Johnson, the prosthetic takes about 25 hours to print, four hours to assemble and costs only about $20 to make..

In the next iteration, Farmer said he wants the thumb to function independently so he can give a thumbs-up.