Iceland review - 2016, Page 50

48 ICELAND REVIEW
JUST A ‘NORMAL’ SCHOOL
Fourteen-year-old student Nataliya
Shabatura welcomes the recent media
interest in the school. “It’s positive
that people want to know more,” she
says. Sigurlaug is also positive about
the increased interest, but stresses that
despite Fellaskóli being the most diverse
school in Reykjavík, and probably Iceland,
at the end of the day, it’s just a normal
school. Sigurlaug and the students we
speak with underline this sentiment. “We
don’t talk about the students as being
foreigners. We think of the students
more as individuals,” Sigurlaug says.
Nataliya’s parents are from Ukraine but
she speaks almost exclusively Icelandic
in her daily life. “My mother speaks to
me in Ukrainian, so I won’t forget the
language, but I speak in Icelandic. I am
Icelandic.” Nataliya’s classmate, 14-year-
old Victoria Dydula, who speaks Russian
and Icelandic, echoes this attitude. “Once
a kid here at school said to me: ‘Oh,
you’re from Russia.’ I said: ‘No, stop: I’m
Icelandic, I’m not a foreigner. When I go
to Russia, I’m a foreigner.’ And I think
most students here don’t think in terms
of foreigners or Icelanders, perhaps just
people from different countries.”
Although it’s a school like any other,
Sigurlaug says that Fellaskóli places spe-
cial emphasis on diversity. “In religious
education we talk about different reli-
gions. We also cover diversity issues in
social studies. We encourage tolerance,
respect and patience. Because our school
is so diverse, we can’t be prejudiced; we
can’t judge each other based on where
we’re from, the language we speak or our
religion.” *
‘Tungumálaregnboginn’ (‘The Language Rainbow’) artwork in the school hallway.
The languages spoken by the students at Fellaskóli are Romanian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Berber (Morocco),
English, Albanian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Tamazight (Morocco),
Igbo (Nigeria), Bisaya (The Philippines), Lithuanian, Arabic, Darija (Morocco), Toniba (Nigeria), Slovenian,
Nepalese, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Thai, Swahili, Egyptian Arabic—and Icelandic.
MULTICULTURALISM