Gregory Kraus knew something was up when an administrator interrupted his automotive class on a recent Tuesday morning, turned his students over to a counselor and pulled him aside for what was supposed to be a conversation about budget items.
A few minutes later, Kraus, who has taught at Amistad High in Indio for nearly a decade, was led into the school's gym, where his students were waiting to surprise him with the news that he had been awarded a 2026 Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence, a national award for public high school skilled trades teachers and their programs.
The $100,000 oversized check was also hard to miss.
Kraus will receive $30,000, and the remaining $70,000 will go to the high school's automotive technology
program, a two-year pathway that gives students hands-on training and experience they can carry into college or the workforce.
His class greeted him with high-fives as he walked into the gym, then paused near the end, smiled, took a deep breath and looked around as his eyes appeared to well.
"This program is my passion," he later told The Desert Sun. "I came into this with just the mindset of, 'I want to change the world in a positive way, one student at a time.'"
Finding his way into teaching
Kraus first took auto shop in high school because he wanted a class where he could work with his hands. By his senior year, with a daughter to support, the class had become more than an elective.
"I needed to start working, so I just stuck with the automotive trade," he said. "Luckily, I had been taught these skills in class. That's what helped me be successful, helped me raise my daughter as a single father."
He spent the next 15 years in the automotive industry, including several years at Honda. Eventually, though, he began looking for work that would give him a greater sense of purpose and a way to way to help others.
"I really felt like I needed more in life," Kraus said.
His mother suggested teaching. Kraus initially brushed off the idea because he had never gone to college, but she helped him learn that his years working in the industry could put him on a path to becoming a career technical education teacher, or CTE, which prepares students for trades and careers.
Since he began teaching nine years ago, Kraus has applied each year for the Harbor Freight prize. The first round asks applicants to explain why career technical education and the skilled trades matter and to describe their programs. Until this year, he had never advanced beyond the first round.
This summer, he wrote more about his students and the paths they pursued after graduation, including graduates like Alexia Valdez, who continued her automotive training in Wyoming before returning to California to work for Tesla. Others have gone on to work at Toyota and Boeing.
"When they're telling me all the stuff that they're succeeding at and doing great in life, I'm just like, that's the whole reason for this," he said.
And for the first time, Kraus' application reached the next stage.
Program makes 'night and day' difference for teens
When Kraus took over the automotive program in the 2017-18 school year, his first year as a teacher, he inherited some students who were already halfway through the two-year pathway.
Moises Patlan, then a student at La Quinta High School, spent his mornings at Amistad for the program and recalled Kraus teaching students not only how to work on vehicles, but how to document repairs, understand how a shop operates and prepare for the workplace.
"He was genuinely invested in what our careers were going to be after high school," said Patlan, whose high school photo is still on the school district's website nearly seven years later.
Students who finish the pathway graduate with some entry-level experience, which Patlan said makes a "night and day" difference once they start working.
Today, Patlan is a master technician at Fiesta Kia in Indio, a milestone he said he reached earlier in his career than than he expected. Several of his classmates have also moved up in the industry as team leads, shop foremen, managers and business owners.
Kraus wants the program's next students to train on equipment closer to what they will encounter in the automotive industry. He plans to spent the award money on newer vehicles, diagnostic equipment and other tools, but wants his classes help decide what the shop adds next.
The wish list got slightly ambitious when a student decided to shoot his shot for a Ferrari.
"This is your program," Kraus told them. "These are your tools, your equipment. This is your stuff."
The Ferrari, at least for now, will have to wait.
Jennifer Cortez covers education and breaking news in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at jennifer.cortez@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Indio teacher wins $100,000. Students' wish list includes a Ferrari
