‘I love dyslexia’ EFL School

Turning students into social entrepreneurs

'I love dyslexia' EFL school, an independent institution in Athens, Greece, is unique as a highly specialised school teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to dyslexic and SEN students. Seeking to challenge the notion that neurodiversity was a burden, the school went above and beyond to develop specific learning tools and an educational model to empower its students to complete their studies with considerable ease.

The origins of 'I love dyslexia' EFL school started with Ms. Aggeliki Pappa, a specialist in the field who has been recognised by international institutions such as the United Nations for her work. Pappa didn’t discover she was dyslexic until much later in her adult life - only after her son was diagnosed did she realise why she had struggled in her studies as a child. That epiphany placed her on the path to challenge preconceived notions that dyslexic children couldn’t thrive in English as a foreign and second language like their peers.

In Greece, help for dyslexic students in the country was limited and for dyslexic students who wanted to learn English as a foreign language, even more so.

Pappa managed to develop an entire education model that sought to accommodate the needs of neurodiverse studies by creating the 3Dlexia for English Method and 3Dlexia paradigm that utilises graphs, maps, images and transformative holistic activities to help learners understand concepts like grammar, syntax, phonemic awareness in the English language as well as develop their whole self. And very quickly, the model began to produce results, with students managing in some cases to outperform their non-dyslexic peers in the time it took to gain their qualifications.

By its 12th year, the school had succeeded in providing thousands of dyslexic students in Greece and globally the tools needed to learn English despite their neurodiversity.

If 'I love dyslexia' EFL school were to win the World’s Best School Prize for Innovation, it would use the funds to create the very first digital platform for EFL and dyslexia – providing an inclusive teaching model that instructors could use anywhere in the world.