Laurie Hilderbrand, a welding teacher from Soquel, has been named a winner of the 2024 Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence, which comes with $15,000 prize for her and $35,000 for her program at Soquel High School.
Hilderbrand is one of 25 public high school skilled trades teachers across the U.S. who were surprised with the award on Tuesday.
“What I love most about being a skilled trades teacher is having the opportunity to inspire students to explore and discover their passions, to recognize their skillsets, abilities, and talents, and connect them to real world 21st century internships and careers in the welding industry and skilled trades,” Hilderbrand wrote in her prize application. “As we prepare students for their futures, I love to watch them dream, grow, create and succeed as they turn their passions into real careers.”
In its eight years of existence, 150 high school trades teachers and their programs have been awarded more than $8.9 million from the program. There were more than 900 applicants this year, winnowed through three rounds of judging by a panel of experts in education, industry, nonprofits and philanthropy.
“Our future will be built by the students in today’s skilled trades classrooms,” said Harbor Freight Tools founder and owner Eric Smidt, who launched the prize in 2017. “We appreciate the outstanding teachers who are preparing the next generation of skilled trades professionals across the United States.”
According to a release from Harbor Freight Tools, Hilderbrand “fell in love with ‘iron and steel’” looking at the architecture in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, growing up. She took up welding in community college.
Hilderbrand has taught art and welding at Soquel High School for 16 years, and took over the welding program there in 2015.
Hilderbrand guides her welding students through projects “from concept to design to fabrication and testing.” The program at Soquel High follows California College and Career Readiness anchor skills standards, and prepares students for the specifications of the welding, manufacturing and product development industries.
Some projects have been extremely creative, including the production of a steel guitar by a former student now at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as an engineering major.
“This project, which the student worked on from the blueprint stage to hand-cutting plasma cutting and welding the pieces together, demonstrated where hand-on-learning, technical skills and creativity align,” Harbor Freight’s release cited as an example of why Hilderbrand was chosen. “With the industry connections that Hilderbrand brings to the classroom, many of her students graduate prepared to study engineering, trades or start their own business straight out of high school.”
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