Today we’d like to introduce you to Liliana Martínez.
Hi Liliana, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am the founder of Rayuela School, the only Spanish Immersion Preschool in our area. I started this journey ten years ago, inspired by my own children and our deep love for our culture. We are a Spanish-speaking family – I am from Colombia and my husband is from Spain. When my kids started preschool, they started responding to me only in English and began forgetting the Spanish we had so carefully taught them at home. My mission became crystal clear – I had to make sure they would always be able to talk to their grandparents and connect with their roots.
I started buying more books, games, and materials to encourage them with their native tongue. Then the director at their Montessori preschool asked me to design a Spanish class that would follow educational guidelines. I created a unique, hands-on, play-based language immersion program that soon became a success as children started using Spanish while engaged in meaningful activities. The magic was happening – kids were learning naturally, joyfully.
Parents began asking me for a summer program because they didn’t want their children to forget during the summer what they had learned during the school year. We opened a summer camp in the church next to my home, and I used my own kitchen for cooking classes. The following year, a parent found us a location in Altadena, in Mariposa Street, and we opened as a summer camp that quickly grew into a full day program serving children ages 2 to 5.
Soon we had a waiting list that grew longer and longer, and we knew we needed to expand. In 2018, we opened a second location in Garfield Street, also in Altadena, where we moved our older children. We worked hard to expand our campus, and it took years (many hearings, plans, county meetings, a lot of time and money) to add more spots. We had finally expanded and were ready to welcome more students as our permits were coming through. Our original location was even lucky enough to receive a grant that allowed us to paint, renovate our school, and take it to the next level. We were right in the middle of that exciting process when everything changed.
The dawn of January 7th was terrifyingly loud. I woke up around 5 am because of the noise from the howling wind and rustling trees. Then I realized our Garfield location had lost power. A teacher who lives in Fontana called saying it was impossible to come to work. I sent an email to parents saying there was no class due to no power. We kept our other location open because there seemed to be no reason to close.
As children started arriving, the wind kept getting worse and worse. Around 9 am, we decided to close early and told parents we would close no later than 3 pm. All the parents came, and we closed at 3 pm. I was worried about my staff getting home safely. The wind was getting more dangerous by the hour.
Around 6 pm, I started getting messages from parents saying there was a fire at the Eaton Canyon and that they were evacuating. People left their homes thinking they were returning the next morning. We never thought about fire for a second – we even had the fire station right across the street from us. What could possibly happen to us?
That night, two giant trees fell on our town houses. One tree broke our neighbor’s house across the street, and another blocked our parking access. We were forced to break the lock of our fire exit. We prepared to evacuate, but it was late, and my kids refused to leave because it wasn’t a mandatory evacuation yet. We slept for just a few hours.
We woke up and made it to check on our schools. One location was still standing but wasn’t safe to be nearby. We went home to work on our property, dealing with fallen trees that had become fuel for fire. Around midday, we learned from the news that our main campus had completely burned down. Everything was gone.
The next few days, we were in pure survival mode, trying to make our remaining campus and home as safe as possible. Emotionally, my family was devastated. We had lost our beautiful school. My staff was heartbroken too. Then my son created a fundraiser so we could continue operating, and we held a community meeting. Our lives had turned completely upside down. We lost everything we had built for more than ten years in just a few minutes.
We didn’t operate for many days. Then we reunited in a theater on January 19th, and we started gathering in public spaces – parks, churches, museums – until after a lot of back and forth, we were finally approved with a license to operate again at a new location at Highland Park at the end of February. A parent helped us find that space. With donations from our amazing parents, we were able to continue paying salaries to our teachers who had stayed with us through everything.
When the children returned, we faced so many challenges. Many children who were already potty trained came back needing diapers again. Some suffered from separation anxiety, and others showed signs of trauma. Our teachers and I worked incredibly hard to create a similar environment so children could heal and come back to achieve new milestones. Right now, we feel there is again a sense of belonging in this new campus, in a new neighborhood, and most of our families have reunited with us.
When I started this school, I wanted to offer families the opportunity to have their children exposed not just to a different language, but to a new culture and rich experiences. I didn’t realize how relevant and needed a bilingual program would become. We actually became the feeder for all the public dual immersion programs in the area.
Our school is a family. It’s an experience and it fulfills a deep need from a community eager to have a safe, diverse, inclusive, respectful space for children to thrive while learning respect for each child, the environment, and love for others. This is who we are, and this is what we’re rebuilding – stronger than ever.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The journey has been anything but easy. The first year brought the challenge of separating from my business partner.
Later, staff struggles tested me in ways I never expected. Managing people, resolving conflicts, keeping everyone motivated while I was still learning what it meant to be a leader—some days I questioned whether I was cut out for this at all. The weight of responsibility for not just the business, but for the livelihoods of those who believed in what we were building, kept me awake many nights.
Then came the fires. Watching everything we’d worked for disappear, seeing our physical space reduced to ash—it felt like the universe was telling just how badly we really wanted this. Standing in those ruins, I had to make a choice: walk away or start over with nothing but experience and determination and the support from my family and the community.
Rebuilding from absolute zero meant confronting every fear and insecurity I’d pushed aside. There were moments when the phoenix metaphor felt like cruel irony—would we actually rise, or just keep struggling in the ashes? Every small step forward was earned through sleepless nights, difficult conversations, and the kind of vulnerability that comes with admitting you don’t have all the answers.
But here’s what I didn’t expect: the connections forged during all these years turned out to be unbreakable. People who stayed, who are helping us rebuild, who are believing when we couldn’t—they became more than colleagues or clients. The lessons learned in crisis became the foundation for something stronger than what we’d lost.
Looking back, I wouldn’t trade this difficult path for an easier one. Not because the struggle was enjoyable, but because it revealed what we were truly capable of building together.
We’ve been impressed with Rayuela School, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Liliana Martínez Scarpellini
Native to Bogotá (Colombia), is Director of Education at Rayuela.
At the age of 18 she began my career in education by both teaching and completing her degree in Philology and Languages. Maestra Lili, as she is known by her students, worked at Berlitz at Rockefeller Center teaching Spanish as a second language to adults and children for a few years while attending New York University to study translation.
In 1996 she pursued a journalism career at Hunter College and after graduation started at Hoy Newspaper, the largest Spanish newspaper at that time in New York city.
Once her two beautiful children, Federico and Bronte, were born in Los Angeles the importance of bilingualism became crucial and she got involved in their education by teaching Spanish at their Montessori school.
Then Rayuela project came to life and inspired this mother, journalist, teacher, translator and overall education advocate.
“I am very proud to have created the only Spanish Immersion Program of the area. We have won the best language school of the area for three consecutive years and we became the feeder of all public dual Spanish Immersion programs in the area. I am proud that my own children believe in my project and they have become part of it.”
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time but also to have been prepared and excited to follow those opportunities.
I am lucky to have a family who believe in me and supported me all the way through.
Pricing:
- Our school is very affordable. Most of our students are middle class families and we do offer scholarships to families in need.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rayuelaschool.org
- Instagram: @rayuelaschool
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rayuelaschool/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rayuela-los-angeles
Image Credits
Rayuela School
