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By the Numbers: CCHS vs. Sprayberry High School...
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Expanding support
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2025 ODYSSEY Media Group Awards Banquet
By the Numbers: CCHS vs. Sprayberry High School...
Breaking news: Interim superintendent, Hooker’s next chapter
Expanding support
#WOMENINMALEFIELDS

ODYSSEY Media Group

  • Home
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    • All Breaking News Q&A World News
      Breaking News

      Breaking news: Interim superintendent, Hooker’s next chapter

      May 8, 2025

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      Expanding support

      May 8, 2025

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      2025 ODYSSEY Media Group Awards Banquet

      May 6, 2025

      News

      More Than A Role: Q&A with Actor Khary…

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      Breaking News

      Breaking news: Interim superintendent, Hooker’s next chapter

      May 8, 2025

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      ODYSSEY sets national pace in fall Clips and…

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      Breaking news: Hooker retires as CCSD Superintendent

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      Event Coverage: Varsity Wrestling Classic City Championship

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      Tell me the odds

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      Equal, not equitable

      October 17, 2024

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      Tell me Wy: Adapted sports

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      Tell me Wy: Better fix baseball

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      Hot topic: Five things to know about Cinco…

      May 5, 2025

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      20th Anniversary

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      Around Athens

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      The gift of giving

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      300 Word Story

      As Diva Does

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300 Word StoryFeaturesSlider

From food to French

May 6, 2018
From food to French
Foreign language department teacher Erica Cascio poses for a photo in her classroom on April 26. Cascio is finishing out her first year teaching, although teaching is something she always wanted to do. “A lot of my family is in education– anywhere from teachers to principals of schools– all across the country. That was something I wanted to do, but I was very busy in my life, with my husband, and our business, and raising our daughter (so) I never really got around to exploring it,” Cascio said. Photo by Rebekah Camp

The ODYSSEY Media Group will provide viewers with stylized profiles that center on people in the Athens community telling their own stories.

Foreign language department teacher Erica Cascio owned restaurants for 23 years before she began teaching, and shares their surprising similarities.

The classroom is filled with chattering students, stumbling through new grammar terms. Foreign language department teacher Erica Cascio is closing out her first year. Although her road to teaching was hardly typical, she believes her past job experience is invaluable.

For 23 years, Cascio worked in the restaurant business with her husband, Joe Cascio. She dealt with all manner of customers, logistical problems and unexpected occurrences, first in Florida, then in Athens. After her restaurant, Square One Fish Company, was bought out, she turned to teaching, something she’d hoped to do, but never had time to follow.

The 2016-17 year opened up an opportunity for Cascio to follow her original career hopes, when she started as a substitute teacher for the Clarke County School District.

Over the past two years, she has learned as much as her students, both about the students themselves, about teaching her students and about herself.

“I’ve made notes to myself about what worked, and what didn’t work, what works in some cases doesn’t always work,” Cascio said. “Never underestimate your students. Everybody has something to teach — everybody.”

But she believes that working in a restaurant, with its occasionally irritable, yet amazing clientele, inevitably noisy environment and harsh or picky critics, has prepared her well for teaching high school.  

And she believes there hasn’t been much difference in her career choices. Many of the rules remain the same: never take things personally, be prepared and always know it’s impossible to please everyone.

“It is an unusual career path, but a business is a business, and the business of life is the business of life, and people are people, no matter how old they are, or where they come from,” Cascio said.

The bell rings, and students file out, gossiping gleefully, leaving behind their teacher, who learns as much as they do. Every day, she learns more. Each day brings something different.

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Rebekah Camp

Rebekah is a junior at Clarke Central High School and the Writing Director for the iliad, CCHS’ literary-art magazine. She hopes to help CCHS students find their creative voice and communicate their ideas clearly through creative expression. When not working for the iliad, she enjoys creative writing, art, playing baseball, trapeze, and rock climbing.

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