TEACHER, SCHOOL WIN $100,000
West Hills High School’s Kathy Worley honored for her dedication to vocational education by Harbor Freight
When she was in high school, Kathy Worley wanted to be a doctor. Instead, because of a class-scheduling mix-up, she became a vocational education teacher.
“I wasn't supposed to be here, but I AM!” she wrote as part of a prizewinning essay that earned her and West Hills High School $100,000.
At a surprise Wednesday morning event in one of her classrooms on the Santee campus, the industrial technology and wood shop teacher received a check as a winner of the 2020 Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence.
Worley, an instructor at West Hills for just over a decade after 23 years teaching at Mount Miguel High School in Spring Valley, will get $30,000 from the Harbor Freight philanthropic group. The other $70,000 is earmarked for the school's skilled trades program.
“We have deep, deep respect for the dignity of the skilled trades and especially for the intelligence and creativity of the people who work with their hands, of students who work with their hands, of teachers who work with their hands, and professionals who really connect with their heart, their heads and their hands,” said Harbor Freight Tools For Schools Executive Director Danny Corwin. “And, Kathy, that's what you've done for more than 30 years.”
Worley was one of three Grand Prize winners. Two other $100,000 Grand Prizes went to Brian Manley, an automotive technology teacher at Cherry Creek Innovation Campus in Centennial, Colo., and Mike Shallenberger, who teaches Engineering at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Highlands Ranch, Colo. In addition, 15 other prize winners and their schools will each receive $50,000.
The essay-based, multi-round competition by Harbor Freight re