The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Teacher receives Construction Education Friend Award
Lamar Hanger, a career technical education instructor at Fontana High School, has been honored by the Associated General Contractors of California with the association’s Construction Education Friend Award.
The award was presented Feb. 2 at the Associated General Contractors of California’s installation and awards gala in San Francisco.
Hanger, who has been teaching at Fontana high since the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, leads the school’s building and construction pathway, and in less than three years he has nearly tripled the number of students in the school’s Career Connections program, a career technical education pathway in general construction.
“This is a tremendous honor, but this is all about our amazing FOHI students, who come to class every day ready to learn and eager to work with their hands. I cannot say enough about these kids,” Hanger said in a news release. “We couldn’t do it here without our leadership team at FOHI, starting with Principal Ofelia Hinojosa and Assistant Principal Marisa Beitler. They have supported everything I have done, and the results speak for themselves.”
In April 2022, Hanger led a group of Fontana High School Career Connections pathway students who had had only five months of carpentry instruction to the Construction Industry Education Foundation’s Design Build competition. The Fontana students won second place and Rookie of the Year honors, according to the news release.
After the Design Build competition,
several students graduated into apprenticeships for a local construction company and are now working as carpenters.
Hanger worked as a union carpenter for 32 years before coming to Fontana High School. While working as a carpenter, he performed freeform lathing on several attractions at Disneyland.
He also worked as an instructor for the Southwest Carpenters Training Fund, training apprentices for eight years before serving as a special representative for Southwest Carpenters.
When Hanger came to Fontana High School, his first order of business was to convert the old woodshop
classroom into a modern training lab. He reached out to contracting firms and asked for donations of tools and materials. While renovating the classroom, Hanger met Fontana High students who wanted to help. Many of those students enrolled in Hanger’s first class and accompanied him to the Design Build competition.
“I cannot say enough about Lamar Hanger. He has transformed FOHI’S construction pathway into a pipeline for students seeking apprenticeships and employment,” Hinojosa said in the news release. “Lamar is so deserving of his award from the AGC. He is an education ambassador who cares so much about his kids.”