For middle school teacher Jose Sierra, Immokalee is so much more than just the place he works.
“It's home,” he told NBC2. “It's home for me.”
Sierra grew up in Immokalee. His parents worked out in the fields. He learned English while in school and eventually graduated from Immokalee High.
Then, after getting a degree in education, he came back home.
He’s now been teaching at one of the places he once learned – Immokalee Middle School – for more than 20 years.
“Seeing the kids. It's me. I see myself in them,” Sierra explained. “I just wanted to come back home to show them a better place."
Over at Village Oaks Elementary in Immokalee, reading teacher Erika Arvizu has a similar backstory.
Her parents – both from Mexico – migrated to the area before she was born. She went to school in Immokalee, left for college, but then also came back.
“They say, 'Immokalee means my home,' and it really is,” she told NBC2. “Immokalee made me who I am."
Both Arvizu and Sierra have another thing in common. They’re working to not only teach at the schools – but also lead them.
At the start of the year, Collier County Public Schools superintendent Dr. Leslie Ricciardelli noticed turnover in the leadership at several schools in Immokalee.
So, she hatched an idea to meet with home-grown teachers – like Arvizu and Sierra – to encourage them to pursue a degree in educational leadership.
“You have the golden ticket,” Ricciardelli recalled telling the teachers. “You understand the community better than anyone else ever will. You should be the one leading this community."
Now, there’s a cohort of about 10 teachers taking classes together through Florida GCU. The goal is to become assistant principals and maybe someday – principals – at Immokalee schools.
“Who better to understand what the students in Immokalee go through every single day than a person who has walked in their shoes at some point," Ricciardelli said.
For those in the program, it’s a chance to give back to the very schools that gave so much to them.
“If we want the community to better, then why not come back and build the community to be better,” Arvizu said.
That’s the main goal: to show students the dream doesn’t have to be a way out of Immokalee.
The dream can be a way up .
“Immokalee's had the stereotype of just a small agricultural town, and for the most part that's all we're going to be,” Sierra explained. “No. We're starting to turn that around. Slowly yet surely it’s starting to become something, so I love it.”