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Misael Rangel is part of the 2016 NMSHSA Summer Internship Program and as a child was enrolled in the ECMHSP Fort Pierce Head Start center in Florida. This is his story.
My name is Misael Rangel. I was born and raised in Fort Pierce, Florida. I am the son of Teresa and Ignacio Rangel, who immigrated to this country in search of a better life by escaping the poverty of their hometown in Guanajuato, Mexico. When they arrived in Florida, my father began work picking oranges. After I was born, we began to migrate to North Carolina, where my father also picked tobacco.
While in Fort Pierce, I was enrolled in East Coast Migrant Head Start Project’s Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Program. My time there was brief, yet it made a huge impact: my siblings and I were able to learn English. In my earliest memories, I remember understanding and speaking both English and Spanish. In a home where Spanish was the only language spoken, the only way I would have learned English so well and so early was through this program. Knowing English helped me in elementary school. Going into kindergarten and grade school knowing English provided a smooth transition; there was no language barrier to prevent communication. I was on the same playing field as my classmates and I even excelled, getting placed into gifted classes early in grade school. It also helped my family because so many times, we found ourselves as little translators for my parents. My parents tell me they too were learning English through us, their kids.
Misael and his brother Juan joined the ECMHSP Policy Council and staff at this year’s Spring meeting.
East Coast Migrant Head Start Project also brought education into perspective for my parents, as it has for countless of other parents of this program. Growing up, my parents emphasized the importance of an education to us. They understood the power an education could have in changing our lives, and I knew they wanted a better life for me and my siblings — not a life littered with the type of suffering they had gone through. My dad never finished the equivalent of middle school in Mexico; and my mother did go on to finish the equivalent of high school, but that is where her education ended. In a new country with no prior knowledge of the U.S. education system, and still learning English themselves, school was not a place where my parents could provide us with guidance. You see, there was a road my siblings and I had to pave for ourselves. We were all learning together as we went through school. Thanks to the ECMHSP program, a fire was lit inside of me in at an early age — the fire that created a thirst for a better life and has become my determination to pursue my higher education.
Once my older sister started elementary school, we settled in Fort Pierce, where my father continued to work in tomato fields, later in a nursery, and eventually in landscaping. Growing up in the farmworker community, I learned the ever-important value of hard work. As my dad would tell me, “The food on your table doesn’t just fall from the sky.” With this always on my mind, I have never taken my studies lightly. I have seen day in and day out the hard labor that my parents have worked in and I know there is something I can do to help them. Growing up, it was hard to stay focused; college was not a path that my family had taken before. At times, it seemed like such a distant, unattainable goal. Nevertheless, I pressed on. I am proud to say I graduated high school in the top ten of my class, with my diploma from the International Baccalaureate program.
Misael graduated in the top 10 percent of his high school class and earned an IB diploma.
Today I attend the University of Central Florida where I am pursuing my degree in Civil Engineering, with a minor in Information Technology. One day, as a civil engineer, I will do what I can to make this world a safe place; for me that means being involved in the construction of our nation’s infrastructure, which needs to be renewed. There are new implications to take into consideration especially with the impact of humanity as a whole on the environment. With that in mind, there is no telling where my work will take me. I hope I can one day serve as an example to kids that went through what I did, that perhaps do not see education as an avenue for them, and let them know that it really is.
Misael was selected from a national pool of college students who were formerly enrolled in Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Programs.
Earlier this year, I was selected from applicants across the country to be in the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association’s summer internship program. This is an opportunity the Association makes possible for college students that have gone through the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program, and it is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for kids like us. This internship makes it possible for us to work at a site fitting to our studies. This summer I am interning at the Hispanic Communication Network, where I am learning different aspects of business and the industry side of IT! The opportunities and networks that I can make here are endless, and this is really a life-changing opportunity.
If there is one thing that I hope anyone can take away from my story it is to not be afraid. I want our farmworker youth to not be afraid to pursue their dreams. But in order for them to achieve their dreams, they need the push. Sometimes, the push may need to come from an outside helping hand. For me, that hand continues to be ECMHSP. I also want our country to support farmworker families like mine, because at the end of the day, it is their hard work that puts that food on the table. Like my dad says, “It doesn’t just fall from the sky.”
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