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.
