 Just outside Seattle, Highline Public Schools is developing bilingual teachers from the ground up. In Chicago, the Public School District has launched multiple programs to grow the ranks of its teacher workforce. And in Mississippi, rural school districts are helping community members gain a foothold in the teaching profession. These programs share the goal of developing teachers from the community or the community. Known as Grow Your Own or GYO, this strategy is designed to address multiple challenges including persistent teacher shortages, a linguistic and racial mismatch between teachers and students, and the misalignment between teacher preparation and local needs. GYO programs are partnerships between school districts, teacher preparation programs, and or community-based organizations that recruit and prepare local community members to enter the teaching profession and teach in their communities. GYO is a powerful strategy because it amplifies the assets of community and seeks to leverage those assets to benefit students in local school systems. This emphasis on who to recruit is really a critical component of GYO programs. This means GYO programs propel paraeducators who support the education of our most vulnerable students to the head of the classroom, seek out high school students with the goal of bringing them back to their home districts to teach, empower parents to pursue degrees in teaching to give back to their local schools and communities, and focus on non-traditional candidates who work full-time or students who are entering college for the first time. GYO programs often offer financial assistance, paid job-embedded learning, academic advising, flexible scheduling for courses, mentorship, tutoring, test preparation, and a cohort model. GYO can be supported in various ways. For starters, policymakers can expand access to community-based teacher preparation programs, and philanthropic groups can financially support local teacher pathways. Higher education institutions can develop strong partnerships with local school districts who can invest in developing local teachers themselves. But most importantly, everyone can champion GYO as a community-based strategy to improve public education.