In a distracting world of buzzing pockets and mindless scrolling, one former WAHS English teacher captivates students and teachers alike. According to senior Reagan Weathers, Claudia Bendick was, “definitely a staple teacher” and “expanded [her] love for English.”
When she was in high school and college, Bendick worked as a secretary. Bendick works as Registrar, a job which she began at the end of 2022. At WAHS, she originally worked as a well-liked English teacher who was known for readily preparing her seniors for higher education.
Bendick is no stranger to academia, having a total of five degrees, including a Bachelors in English, a Bachelors of Music, and a minor in Theater from Stephen F. Austin State University; a Master of Sacred Music from the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas; and an MA in English at UVA.
After growing up in Texas, Bendick moved to Colorado with her fiancé and began teaching at a Christian college. After Colorado, she moved to Virginia with her daughter and received her Masters in English. At WAHS, she began teaching AP Literature “midyear… to cover for a teacher who had to leave on a medical leave. After the half year, they hired [her] full time,” and she has continued to work at Western for the past fifteen years.
Bendick has “always felt that being a teacher was what [she] was born to be,” and said, “sometimes you discover amazingly, an avocation and a vocation that overlap, and that’s what happened with me.”
Teaching isn’t the only thing that has captured her soul; her deep passion for music began when she started playing piano at four years old. Her love for English also spans decades, and she cited enjoying the subject when she was younger, saying that she “accidently double-majored” in English and Music because she simply took too many English classes during her time at Stephen F. Austen.
Currently here at WAHS, Bendick works as a student registrar, who, according to principal Jennifer Sublette, “maintains all of our student information systems and database on attendance,” and “all sorts of important pieces that we use to evaluate how we’re doing as a school.” Sublette stated that she manages grades as well and ensures that every student has the ability to graduate.
According to Bendick, when she was teaching, her “biggest goal was to prepare the kids that were going out to college to succeed in college. Now I feel like my job is to support admin and teachers and to make their lives a little easier… let them take care of the kids while I do the rest of the stuff.” And multiple former students have reached out to her expressing their appreciation for her class and her teaching.
“A lot of other teachers liked her,” Weathers said. “And would specifically connect stuff back to her class and not other teachers’.”
According to Sublette, Bendick, “was a phenomenal English teacher for us,” who was “both an amazing educator and scholar of literature and teacher of writing, but… [also] super organized, meticulous, and incredibly professional… [and] essential to helping us know exactly how successful we’re being and what areas we need to grow in.”
