He wasn’t asked if he wanted to go to college. Now his classroom gives teens a safe place

Mauricio Portillo usually doesn’t head home after the dismissal bell rings at Orting High School on Mondays.

Instead, he waits for students to trickle back into his classroom.

Portillo has been teaching Spanish at Orting High for over five years. He’s also the Culture Club advisor. The club is where students can talk about each other’s identities, cultures and lived experiences.

The club is also where students learn to find their voice, he said. It’s “powerful” to offer a safe space for students to share their thoughts and feelings, as well as give them advice, Portillo said.

“Every single morning is like a blessing,” he said.

Portillo established the club in 2019. It started out as Spanish Club, he said, but he saw a need to expand it to make space for all cultures on campus.

The club, which has about 20 students, hosts a Cultural Unity Fair every school year. It’s an event where culinary students serve free food from different parts of the world. At the June 6 fair, students offered musubis, açai bowls and horchata. The high school gymnasium was packed with visitors of all ages.

Portillo, 27, was born in San Salvador, El Salvador. His family moved to the U.S. in 2001 when he was 5 years old. He’s the oldest of his siblings — he has a younger sister and brother.

Moving to a different country is a memory he will never forget. Getting a travel visa and traveling by plane was a much “luckier” experience, he said, than others he knew who had to travel on foot over the border.

Portillo remembers having the window seat on the plane. Hovering over clouds and being high up in the sky was a “life-changing” experience for him, he said. When they landed at an airport in Texas, he thought he had time traveled into the future.

“I was just really happy to be there,” he said.

Around the same time, his mom cried at the airport when she realized her wallet had been stolen, Portillo said. It had about $2.50 inside. Her sadness confused him because he thought being in the U.S. was supposed to be an exciting time.

The family met a janitor at the airport soon after. She was also from El Salvador. She offered them a bed in her apartment for the night. The following morning she offered them a big bag full of coins to take to their next destination.

The family took a bus to Las Vegas to visit some of his parent’s friends. Then they took another bus to California. The last bus they rode took them to Washington. All that happened in about two months, Portillo said.

The family moved around the plateau and found a home in Enumclaw. He went to Enumclaw High School. Then he graduated from Trinity International University in Dolton, Illinois, in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in business.

Football scholarships helped pay for his education at Trinity International University. He has his old helmets displayed in his classroom.

A former Orting School District superintendent called Portillo one day to ask if he’d be interested in teaching Spanish because the school needed a teacher. Portillo called one of his professors to ask what he should do. The professor told him to take the chance, and he did.

Portillo said his parents told him in middle school that they didn’t have the money to support his college education. Around the same time, he said he noticed the “disconnect” between public schools and marginalized communities.

A high school counselor never asked him if he was interested in going to college, he said.

“The hidden blessing of being an impoverished minority is that maturity you get from a very young age,” Portillo said. “It’s that maturity that’s put upon you not because you want it but because you just have to mature faster.”

He said he recalls a time in elementary school he’ll “never forget.” A second-grade teacher made a joke about him wearing the same shirt every day. It had Spider-Man on it. He loves Spider-Man.

“She was like: ‘Don’t you have any other, different shirts?’ I was aware of what she was trying to say by … the tone and the volume she said it in,” Portillo said.

His second-grade teacher is someone he never wants to be like, he said.

“There’s a lot of students that I see more than their parents see them. There’s a lot of students that I have a bigger influence on than their home life,” Portillo said. “That’s something that I don’t take lightly.”

Joseph Maranda, a junior at Orting High, said he’s been part of the club for about a year. He said he likes having the space to say what he wants, and that marginalized students have a safe space offered to them.

Katie Taylor, another junior at Orting High, has been in the club for about a year also. She described Portillo as a “stereotypical surfer dude,” minus the surfing part, because of his calm and laid-back demeanor.

Maranda described Portillo as a non-judgemental and encouraging person. He said Portillo also genuinely enjoys seeing his students grow.

“Mr. Portillo is an incredibly inspiring person,” Maranda said.

This story was originally published July 28, 2023 at 5:00 AM.

Angelica Relente

The News Tribune

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Angelica Relente covers topics that affect communities in East Pierce County. She started as a news intern in June 2021 after graduating from Washington State University. She is also a member of Seattle’s Asian American Journalists Association. She was born in the Philippines and spent the rest of her childhood in Hawaii.