Teacher feature: the brilliant and bodacious Claudia Bautista

By Juliet Swimmer, Copy Editor & Alani Kanan, Staff Writer

Introducing Claudia Bautista, one of Samo’s Spanish Immersion and Freshman Seminar teachers known for her significant impact on her students through the Civic Action Project. Bautista has an immensely interesting past, from growing up during the El Salvadoran Civil War and immigrating to California to eventually becoming the teacher she is today. Two staff writers from The Samohi sat down to talk with her via Zoom on March 3. 

Juliet Swimmer: Hello! Thank you so much for joining us today for this teacher feature, we hope you are doing well! My name is Juliet Swimmer. 

Alani Kanan: And I am Alani Kanan. Just to get started, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became a teacher?

Claudia Bautista: I was born in El Salvador. And I lived through the El Salvadoran Civil War, so the reason I came here was not because I didn’t want to live in my country, but because it was so violent that we had to escape. And that was really hard because I came here, and I didn’t know how to speak any English. In Glendale, California, they did not have ESL classes, so I was placed in the special needs classes. How I really learned how to speak English was just by watching The Carol Burnett Show on T.V. and the Brady Bunch. So, funny enough, I realized that it was really important to learn how to communicate in a different language. And I think that’s probably why I became a dual language immersion teacher. I went to UCLA and I studied history, and I was fascinated by history, but I felt like I didn’t really want to continue pursuing it because I felt like history was always told from a certain perspective. At least when I was learning history in high school, I really never saw myself reflected in it. So I moved on to Spanish and I started doing literature because I felt at least there you could really hear what people were feeling. And then I went to Yale for grad school and realized I did not want to be a professor because it’s very lonely. I felt like teaching was really more what I want to do. And I’m so thrilled that I get to have the honor of having young kids that I get to know and then see them grow and become amazing human beings. So that’s how I became a teacher.

JS: What was it like growing up in El Salvador and how did that affect your teaching now?

CB: To be honest, it was so awful that it helps me value life. I don’t take life for granted because when I was little, I would hear the helicopters coming and taking the youth. We had death squads that would take away the young people that were going against the government, and I knew a lot of them, because they were friends. I was the youngest of four sisters. My most vivid memories of being a kid is that there was a young man that they had killed who lived down the street from me. And they butchered his body and left it in front of the elementary school so that everyone in that elementary school had to see it. So I think that really helped me appreciate education and life, and not take it for granted. But I felt like through education, you really were able to touch more lives and just help kids feel like it’s okay. My mom left us there with my grandmother because she came to the U.S. to work and my father had been murdered when I was three months old. My grandmother was my superhero, she was this tiny little woman who was only 4’11”. And no one would mess with my grandmother. She was a badass. 

JS: You talked a little about the Civic Action Project, what was the meaning behind it? 

CB: It was something a lot of teachers were doing; Mr. Kay was doing it. It really started in the sciences, but I took it more from the realm of social justice. How do you make society a little more just? This is before the Black Lives Matter movement and all of that, but all of these issues that have come up have just kind of been perfectly, you know, married to this concept of how do you become a voice of resistance? When you see that there is an injustice in front of you how do you become an upstander rather than just a bystander? At first, it was hard to get kids into it, because they’re like, “I don’t see any problems.” But now, it’s the total opposite. Now the kids are like, “Well, I want to do this and I want to do this”, like, oh my god. So your generation is phenomenal. It is the least apathetic generation I have ever met in my life and let me tell you, I’ve met a lot of generations, and you just come ready to take action. So I think it’s really the right time to be teaching with that mindset. So I’m really excited about that. 

JS: How has the Civic Action Project affected your relationship with your students?

CB: I really believe that the [Civic Action Project] should be something that is their passion, not my passion. I really help them find their own voice. And because they find their own voice, we become a lot tighter. So I’ve kept in touch with kids, some of them are now turning 35. I think if you go through an experience together, somehow, it binds you forever. And I think that project has really done that for a lot of my kids.

AK: What are your hobbies and what do you enjoy doing?

CB: My favorite thing in the whole wide world is Totoro. I love Totoro. I’m a big reader and a movie fan. My son is a big movie buff. So we watch a lot of movies together. We’re missing the movie theaters a lot. I met my husband dancing salsa, so I used to dance a lot, but you know, everything’s closed now so I’m not dancing much anymore. I just enjoy being with family and I don’t really have a lot of hobbies because I work so much. Just being with family is my hobby, so that I can cook and hang out with them. That’s the best thing that could happen to me.

JS: Do you have your top three favorite books? 

CB: Yes. My favorite book of all time is “Don Quixote”. By far. I love that book. My second favorite book would probably be “100 Years of Solitude” by Garcia Marcus and the third one, probably “Light in August” by Willam Faulkner. I love Faulkner. I think Faulkner is one of our greatest gifts. I mean, there’s so many others that I love but those are the three that if I had to choose three to read over and over again, those would be the three.

JS: Thank you so much.

CB: Nice to meet you. Bye!