School teacher Natalia Staykova – the battle abroad is to preserve the Bulgarian language

Meeting with the first primary school teacher in the Bulgarian section of the European School in Brussels

published on 5/24/25 11:05 AM

Natalia Staykova

Photo: Private archive

Natalia Staykova is a primary school teacher, one of those educators for whom working with children is not just a profession, but a calling. She says that children give her strength and energy. She puts her whole soul and heart into teaching them to read and write.

Looking back, Ms. Staykova says that she fell in love with teaching while still a student at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". With her first professional steps, she ended up in one of the prestigious Sofia schools, and nearly five years later she herself began teaching students as a basic teacher at Sofia University. In the year when Bulgaria became part of the European Union family, life's paths took Natalia Staykova to Brussels, where her profession very quickly rediscovered her.

"In 2007, quite unexpectedly for me, it became clear that my husband would be given a position in Brussels. We had to make a family decision very quickly to move and live here for a short time. At that moment, it was really for a short time. I missed my children terribly. I had a hard time surviving the separation from the school. But at one point, maybe a year after our arrival in Brussels, the profession found me again. It happened quite by chance. The Bulgarian Sunday school at the Bulgarian embassy was urgently looking for a primary school teacher. Very quickly, without thinking, I rushed into this adventure. Of course, the nature of the work in this school was completely different from that in the capital's 7th school.

Here, all of us colleagues worked on the National Revival period principle - to do everything possible to preserve the language. Since you cannot avoid the foreign language exposure abroad, the battle was to preserve the Bulgarian language. That is why we threw ourselves into it and gave all the strength we had to start and develop the school. At that time, the state adopted a policy of helping Bulgarian weekend schools abroad and we got involved in the preparation and registration of the school under Decree 90 on Bulgarian schools abroad," says the teacher.

In 2012, when a Bulgarian section was opened at the European School in Brussels, Natalia Staykova was the first primary teacher in the newly created structure. Now the school has about 150 Bulgarian children, but in the beginning there were only 4.

"Yes indeed, I was the first teacher in the primary school. Three colleagues were sent from Bulgaria - one teacher in the kindergarten, one in the primary school and one pedagogical advisor in the secondary school. The beginning was difficult. It was a challenge. I started and opened the Bulgarian section with four children in the first grade. It was truly a very exciting moment. It was a challenge and a responsibility to create, develop and establish the section. Again, we had to make every effort to declare ourselves and impose ourselves in the school community.

We wanted to make sure that everyone knew and talked about Bulgaria. In the beginning, every time after vacation they asked us: "How is the weather?" "How is the situation in Bucharest?" It took us some time to teach our colleagues that the capital of Bulgaria is Sofia. Now no one gets confused anymore. 13 years have passed. Last year was the graduation of the first class from the Bulgarian section. Currently, about 150 Bulgarian children are studying here," says Natalia Staykova.

The unique educational system of the European Schools builds multilingual young people with a European identity. These schools are specially created organizations for the joint education of the children of employees of the European institutions. It is important to know that in each language section at the initial stage, children study a large part of the subjects in their mother tongue.