KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Each day many teachers across Central Florida get up and go to school, motivated to make sure that no student on their watch slips through the cracks. For Nicole Mehit, who teaches at Gateway High School in Kissimmee, that mission is personal because she dropped out of high school when she was 16.

Mehit teaches a leadership class at Gateway High School. Teaching has become personal to her.

“I value their opinion and their voice, so I make sure that when they walk into the classroom they’re heard, and they’re seen, and they know that somebody genuinely cares about them,” she said.

Mehit admits that was not the feeling that she experienced when she was their age. She said she’s honest with them about that time in her life.

“I wasn’t always the greatest student in high school. I had some ups and downs,” she said.

Mehit said she never felt that she belonged. She felt like she was slipping through the cracks.

“I had a very hard time in school. I didn’t feel like I belonged or that there was a sense of purpose to it,” she explained.

When she was a 10th grader at 16 years old, she made a life altering decision.

“I never made it to my senior year of high school. I dropped out. That’s what made the road back to being a teacher so difficult,” she shares.

But she felt the path back to school was absolutely necessary.

Mehit said with the help of her mother, she later finished school and earned her GED. Mehit then went on to college to study education, graduating from the University of Central Florida on a mission to get back into a high school classroom to make a difference.

“My biggest goal was to come back to ensure that students who were like me made sure that they had somebody to help guide them to finish and do what they were meant to do. But to be here now and to be able to guide them through their hardships is probably what I’m most proud of,” she said.