MOUNT DORA, Fla. — Mount Dora High School teacher Alejandra Perez says she has high expectations for the students in her 11th grade history class, and she wants them to do the thinking.

It's one of several reasons they say they love and respect her.

Students dig deep to really get an understanding of the day’s lesson, and Perez 's lesson plans are among the reasons she was nominated as a Lake County A+ Teacher.

"My class is very interactive,” Perez said. “We work together every day. We read like a historian, we do things like annotations, and we decide what documents have to say. We source, we corroborate and conceptualize to piece together a moment from the past and to answer a historical question."

Perez says she didn't initially intend to be a teacher.

"For me, I kind of stumbled into teaching,” she said. “I worked as an AmeriCorps Vista at Meadowbrook Middle School after I graduated college, and I wanted to be a part of that work."

She says her family inspired her, too.

"I'm also a daughter of immigrants,” she said. “My parents came from Colombia, so there's always a question of, ‘How are you going to give back to this community and how are you going to give back to this country?’"

Perez says she has an important takeaway for each of her students.

"I also want them to recognize that history isn't in dusty textbooks,” she said. “It's not stuff that's hidden in a museum that they have to go visit — that history is all around us."