Karina Camacho, who currently teaches 10th and 11th grade English at Harding, grew up in a small town in Northern California, called Olivehurst. Her father was a roper, while her mother was a barrel racer. She has accustomed herself to Oklahoma’s culture. 

“The people there are somewhat like the people in Oklahoma, but not quite as nice,” she said. 

While she was growing up, she decided to become a teacher. 

“I did not want to get a job in the ‘real world’,” she said. “I wanted to stay in education.” 

She initially started teaching at San Jose State University, before going to teach at Oregon State. She then went to work for Oklahoma State. 

While at OSU, she protested the university’s plan to remove laptops from the classroom and succeeded. 

Due to the distance between Camacho and her daughters, who were living in OKC, she decided to leave her job at the university, where she then moved to HCP.  

“It was an hour and a half each way, and I just couldn’t do it anymore, “she said. “I’m only 20 minutes away now.” 

 The transfer from college to high school has not been easy, though. The workload is rough, as she used to teach four classes. Now she teaches six, plus advisory. 

“It’s just like one big community. When I taught at the university, I’d go teach my class and that’s it; You never really felt like you were a part of a community.” 

Even though teaching high school can be challenging at times, she intends to bring her same passion for activism to Harding. Camacho plans on having her juniors research and write papers to hand over to Superintendent Stephen Stefanick, in an effort to revoke the no phones policy. 

When she is not teaching, Camacho enjoys watching professional bull riding. She also spends time horseback riding with one of her daughters, which she has three of as well as two sons. She also has three dogs, two sugar gliders and a cat.  

In the summer, she plans to travel around Europe, going from Belgium, to Paris then to London.  

Camacho said she is very excited about her future here at Harding and hopes to make an impact on her students.