Odyssey Charter School unveiled its completed K–5 Immersion Building in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 9, doubling the capacity of a program in which students spend half their core instructional time learning in Greek.
The first floor opened last year with roughly 250 immersion students. With both floors now complete, the building can serve about 500 students. The milestone was marked during “Odyssey’s Όραμα: An Evening of Legacy” with a formal Agiasmos, or Blessing of the Waters, by His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America.
Educators, dignitaries, and members of the Greek-American community gathered outside the new wing before the ribbon cutting.
“This is a very, very, very big day for Odyssey Charter School,” CEO and Head of School Elias Pappas told the crowd. “It’s a big day for American education, a big day for Greek education, and it’s a big day for education overall.”
Pappas contrasted Odyssey with immersion programs where a substantial portion of students already speak the target language at home.
“Let me tell you what the percentage of Greek-speaking students we have that come to Odyssey Charter School: it is one percent,” he said.
“But they come out not only speaking Greek,” Pappas continued, “but they do better on American tests by 200 percent, SAT, ACT, SBAC.”
Odyssey’s published materials make a narrower claim, reporting that immersion students outperform Delaware averages in English language arts and mathematics by 140 to 200 percent. The figures are school-reported comparisons.
“This isn’t just a small Greek program,” Pappas said. “This is changing the trajectory of education.”
Odyssey’s elementary immersion students receive 50 percent of their core instruction in Greek and 50 percent in English. Mathematics, science, and Greek language arts are taught in Greek, while English language arts and social studies are taught in English. The school says 99 percent of students in the program are non-native Greek speakers.
Dr. Ioanna Lekkakou, Odyssey’s Vice President of Hellenic Education and Global Outreach, described the work as extending beyond students of Greek descent.
“I feel that we are on a mission here, a mission regarding Hellenic paideia, our Greek language, our heritage, but also a mission to support these kids who are not of Greek descent,” she said.
Odyssey recruits teachers from Greece to help staff its Greek-language programs.
“We bring teachers from Greece,” Lekkakou said. “We have, like, a small Greece here in Wilmington.”
She described Odyssey as “the only standalone Greek-language immersion school in North America” and said the school is working toward carrying the model beyond Delaware.
“We work with the Greek government, the Greek Minister of Education, to take the Odyssey model, the Greek-language model, across the United States,” she said. “We want more programs, we want more schools, we want all the kids to receive this gift of bilingualism in the Greek language.”
“We are here to share this vision with the whole community across the United States, from California, here to Delaware, New York, Florida,” Lekkakou added. “Everybody is on the same mission.”
Archbishop Elpidophoros focused his remarks on the distinction between studying Greek as a foreign language and using it as a language of instruction.
“Greek is not simply studied for a few hours each week, it becomes a language of education itself,” he said. “Students encounter mathematics and science through Greek, with half of their core academic instruction delivered in Greek and half in English.”
He also addressed the makeup of the student body.
“Most of these children are neither of Greek ancestry nor members of the Greek Orthodox Church,” the Archbishop said. “Just one percent are native speakers. Yet Greek becomes part of the way they learn, the way they think, the way they reason.”
His remarks connected the language being taught in Wilmington with concepts including democracy and philosophy and with a Greek tradition of dialogue, logic, and disciplined reason.
Before the Agiasmos, he invoked national poet Dionysios Solomos: “Enclose Greece within your heart, and you will feel within you the longing for every kind of greatness.”
He told the gathering that Odyssey’s students had encountered Greece “through education, language, friendship, discovery, ideas, and the love of learning.” The Archdiocese described the September 9 event as the official launch of Odyssey’s K–5 building.
After the blessing, guests moved inside the completed K–5 wing for a reception with live Greek music and traditional dancing.
Odyssey opened in 2006 with 135 students in kindergarten through second grade. Today it serves more than 2,400 students across K–12.
The school’s roots also run through Wilmington’s Greek-American community. Chapter 95 of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association helped establish Odyssey and provided its $65,000 scholarship fund as a non-interest-bearing startup loan. The loan was forgiven in 2012.
The Greek dual-language immersion program began in the 2017–18 school year.
Odyssey was named a finalist for the 2023 Yass Prize and received a $500,000 STOP Award. The Yass Prize said the funding would help the school build out its facilities and create space for more immersion students.
The next stage is no longer limited to the Wilmington campus.
In March, Odyssey was named one of 11 recipients of the Yass Prize Alumni Expansion Investment. The program is intended to help participating schools renovate existing campuses, add locations, or expand into new states. The 11 recipients were awarded packages of grants and interest-free loans.
Odyssey has not announced where an out-of-state location might open.
For now, the completed Wilmington building gives the school room to do more of what it has already been doing: teaching Greek not primarily to children who inherit the language at home, but to hundreds who encounter it for the first time at school.
Whether that model can be reproduced elsewhere is the next question.
Lekkakou’s remarks left little doubt that Odyssey intends to find out.