About
Garron Park
US History · Southeast High School, Oklahoma City · M.Ed., University of Central Oklahoma
Background
Committed to Southeast. Committed to Students.
I teach US History at Southeast High School in Oklahoma City, where I have also taught Government, World History, AP World History, AP US History, Civics, Personal Finance, and Street Law. I came to Southeast as a student teacher through the Urban Teacher Preparation Academy, a partnership between Oklahoma City Public Schools, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Central Oklahoma.
I hold a degree from Southern Nazarene University and an M.Ed. from UCO, where my graduate research focused on how student-teacher relationships shape motivation in high school. That research informs how I teach, and it is the foundation behind Broadsheet Education.
"I don't see myself leaving. Just the work that needs to be done in Oklahoma education."The Oklahoman, 2019
In the Classroom
What I Believe About Teaching
A few principles that shape how I approach history and civics every day.
Students First
Low pay and high mandates are real pressures in public education. But they fade in the classroom. The relationship between a teacher and a student is the most important variable in education, and I treat it that way.
Evidence-Based Practice
Teachers are expected to justify their instructional decisions with data. I hold that standard for myself, and I hold district and administrative decisions to the same bar.
Belonging Drives Learning
My graduate research confirmed what good teachers already know: when students feel securely connected to the adults in their school, their motivation increases. Presence and accessibility are not soft skills. They are pedagogy.
Teacher Voice Matters
Educators should be genuine stakeholders in the decisions that shape their schools. I believe in advocating publicly and professionally for that seat at the table.
Dialogue Over Deposit
Drawing on Paulo Freire, I reject the "banking model" of education where students are passive recipients of someone else's curriculum. Knowledge is co-constructed. Students are subjects of their own learning, not objects of instruction.
Education as Liberation
Rooted in the tradition of Gutierrez and Cone, I understand genuine education as an act of liberation, especially for communities that have been materially and spiritually marginalized. The classroom is a site of dignity before it is a site of content delivery.
Graduate Research
M.Ed. Thesis
University of Central Oklahoma · Department of Educational Sciences, Foundations, and Research · 2018
Attachment in Secondary Education: Effects of Student Attachment Bonds with Parents and Teachers on Student Motivation
Garron K. Park · UCO · ProQuest No. 10929745 · 2018
The consistent amount of time a student spends with educators throughout their childhood requires that researchers take steps to understand the extent of the impact these relationships might have. This research utilizes attachment theory as a framework through which student-teacher relationships impact student motivation beyond that of parent-child relationships. Findings indicate that while teacher-student and parent-child attachments are correlated, student motivation is predicted more strongly by attachment to a parent than to a secondary educator.
Why Broadsheet Education
Tools Built from the Classroom Out
Broadsheet Education grew out of a simple frustration: the tools available to students and teachers rarely reflect how learning actually works in a public school classroom. Most are built for a different audience, priced for a different budget, or designed with assumptions that do not hold at a school like Southeast.
The tools here are built by a teacher, for K-12 classrooms. The Overton Window Search started as a way to help US History students encounter a genuine range of perspectives on the issues they were studying, not just what a search engine or AI produces. The AI and Plagiarism Checker came from a need to give teachers and students a shared, honest starting point for conversations about writing integrity in an era of generative AI.
Both tools reflect the same conviction: students learn better when they have access to honest, well-designed resources, and when the adults around them treat that access as a priority.
"Education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves."
Paulo Freire