Garson wins $50,000 Teaching Excellence award

Published 1:30 am Saturday, October 4, 2025

Students and faculty gathered in front of Friday Harbor High Sept. 30 to surprise and congratulate STEM teacher Sam Garson for winning Harbor Freight’s Tools for Schools $50,000 Teaching Excellence award. Garson was told he was meeting with Randy Martin and was bringing the STEM electric vehicle around to the front. He pulled the purple EV to the sidewalk and jumped out.

‘If I have been able to do any of this, it’s because of everyone else in this building, and all of the students,” Garson told the crowd after it was announced he had won. “So for every student that ever responded to an email where I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got an opportunity’ and you helped build the car, you went to TSA and did a challenge down in Seattle, or Spokane, we have a trophy case full of awards from our small little school, from NASA Tech Rise.”

The Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence began in 2017 by Eric Smidt, owner and founder of Harbor Freight Tools, with a mission to increase understanding, support and investment in skilled trades education in U.S. public high schools. Award winners teach a variety of skilled trades, including construction, carpentry, welding, automotive, agricultural mechanics, advanced manufacturing and industrial technology.

“In recent years, we have seen growing support for the expansion of skilled trades education in high schools,” Smidt said in a recent press release. “The skilled trades are experiencing significant labor shortages and these outstanding teachers are leading the way in developing a new generation of skilled trades professionals.”

The prize, now in its ninth year, has awarded $10 million to over 180 teachers and their programs. Winners came from all over the country; a full list of winners can be found at https://hftforschools.org/prize-for-teaching-excellence/2025-prize/.

“Through a rigorous application process, our prize winners shared their unique depth of experience and skill for teaching the skilled trades,” said Danny Corwin, executive director of Harbor Freight Tools for Schools. In addition to the cash awards, they will join a network of more than 150 previous winners working to help boost skilled trades education in their local communities and nationally.

Competition was steep, with more than 1,000 applications, and the process was vigorous. Applicants underwent three rounds of judging by an independent panel of experts from education, industry, nonprofits and philanthropy.

The 25 winners and their programs will receive a total of $1.5 million in cash prizes as follows:

Five grand prize winners

Amount: $100,000 each, $70,000 for their school’s skilled trades program and $30,000 for the teacher.

Twenty prize winners

Amount: $50,000 each, $35,000 for their school’s skilled trades program and $15,000 for the teacher.

In some cases, due to school, district or state policy, the schools’ skilled trades programs will receive the entire prize winnings.

Besides faculty and students, representatives from Harbor Freight were on hand to congratulate him and speak on the importance of education, and Jeremy Harrison Smith from Gov. Ferguson’s office was also there to shake Garson’s hand.

Showing what had led to Garson’s award, a press release from Harbor Freight started by citing a quote from his application, “Success is measured not just by outcomes, but by how students grow into capable, career-ready individuals with confidence in their skills,” Garson wrote.

His accomplishments over just the past few years include:

In 2022, Garson received a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program award.Graduates move on to elite universities, apprenticeships and internships; students earned second place in a national design contest for wiring a USB port into a fully assembled motor controller.

Garson participates in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Ocean Exploration Trust expeditions, bringing cutting-edge industry experience directly into classroom projects.

The school district’s Career and Technical Education Director, Liz Varvero, also spoke, “My job is to make sure Sam Garson’s crazy ideas are captured, compliant and funded,” Varvero said as she introduced herself.

“Since 2018, my inbox has been spammed with emails from him with subject lines like ‘let’s go’ and ‘how do you like them apples’ and ‘could we, should we?’.. And my favorite, ‘bam.’ Do you know how hard it is to search for your inbox for his ideas when they have no subject line?” Varvero laughed. “To say Sam is qualified is an understatement … This man makes us scroll like the wheel on ‘Price is Right.’ He is in CTE alone, qualified to teach biomedical science, aquaculture, communication technologies, natural resources, stem technologies, and business management. He’s a nationally board-certified teacher and endorsed to teach Gen. Ed science and even got a math endorsement so his 3D design students could get a math credit. It’s been a wild ride, Sam; it’s been fun.”

Students and faculty alike cheered, and students held up their signs that read “Congratulations Sam, you deserve it,” “Good Job, Garson,” and “Woo hoo, Congratulations!”

“Everyone around me that’s always pushed me to try to come up with bigger, better, weirder ideas, to an administration that says ‘ yeah, you can go out on a fishing trawler for 21 days and try to bring those skills back to your students. This is not like most schools. When we go to conferences and talk about the students here, they get wide-eyed, and this is why,” Garson said. “The next email I send, the next idea that we have, I hope more of you will try to take it on and we’ll see what we can do with this prize money, and what the next big thing will be.”