In a world where education often leans towards rigid systems and performance metrics, finding a mentor who brings both structure and soul into the classroom is rare. That’s exactly what sets Samita Bhattacharya apart.
With over 17 years of experience in international education, Samita has mastered the craft of teaching English across the IBDP and IGCSE curriculum. Her expertise spans English A Language & Literature, Literature, and English First Language, subjects that demand not just technical skill but a deep emotional understanding of text, culture, and human experience. She has also held two Head of Department roles and serves as a qualified IBDP examiner, further reinforcing her credibility and leadership in the field.
Samita’s journey began in Kolkata, India, where her love for literature was nurtured in a culturally rich environment. From working as a freelance editor with UNICEF India to teaching at the British Institute, her early career was marked by exploration. But it was after moving to Singapore that her professional calling took shape. Balancing motherhood and freelance work in the corporate world, she eventually gravitated towards education, a field that gave her both impact and purpose.
Today, Samita’s approach to teaching is both nuanced and nurturing. She brings clarity, structure, and genuine passion to every lesson, helping students not only understand literature but connect with it. In every classroom she enters, she does more than teach, she inspires discovery, critical thinking, and lifelong love for language.
Let us learn more about her journey:
After nearly a decade of reflection and recalibration, Samita made a deliberate shift into the field of education, driven by a desire to create a lasting impact. She had long questioned the traditional methods of teaching humanities, especially within the Indian context, where rote memorization often overshadowed critical thinking and creativity. She believed, and continues to believe, that education should inspire curiosity, empathy, and independent thought. Achieving this requires a personalized, student-centered learning environment.
Though her academic background from Calcutta University provided a solid foundation, entering the education sector was not without challenges. Lacking formal teaching experience initially limited opportunities, yet a significant breakthrough came when she secured a teaching position at GIIS Singapore. There, she taught both IGCSE and IB programs, marking her first formal step into education and the beginning of her leadership path.
Over time, Samita embraced greater responsibilities beyond the classroom, influencing educational settings and leading teams. At GIIS, she advanced to Deputy Head of Department, followed by a role as Faculty Head at NPS International School. These positions enabled her to mentor fellow educators, oversee curriculum development, and nurture learning environments that prioritized students in every decision. In 2019, she joined Hwa Chong International School, and by January 2022, she took a bold step by founding her own tutorial company. This venture, connecting students worldwide, reflects the culmination of her experiences and beliefs: education should be transformative, inclusive, and focused on preparing learners for the future.
Her approach to leadership combines traditional academic rigor with a modern understanding of student needs. She values discipline, structure, and high standards, qualities that have long underpinned meaningful education. At the same time, she acknowledges the complexities students face today, recognizing that academic success must not come at the expense of emotional well-being. As a leader, she strives to cultivate a learning environment that challenges the intellect while offering emotional support, where students feel safe to explore, take risks, question, and grow. Balancing high expectations with empathy and accountability with compassion defines the perspective she brings to every decision as an educator and mentor.
Samita’s role as an IBDP examiner has significantly enhanced her effectiveness and insight as an educator. This experience has deepened her understanding of the curriculum’s rigor along with the high standards expected of students, enabling her to guide them with greater clarity and precision. The thorough standardization processes and ongoing professional development provided by the IB Educator Network (IBEN) have refined her assessment skills while enriching her classroom engagement.
Serving as an examiner has expanded her perspective on global learning evaluation, inspiring her to focus on conceptual clarity, differentiated instruction, and critical thinking. She now places stronger emphasis on developing students’ analytical and writing abilities in line with IB assessment criteria. This role has also reshaped her feedback approach, centering on constructive, targeted insights that encourage students to reflect, revise, and improve. Above all, it has helped her create a learning environment where students feel both supported and challenged, with growth that is measurable and meaningful.
A particularly memorable teaching moment emerged during the study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. Many students, especially those from Indian cultural backgrounds, reacted strongly and with judgment to Moushumi’s extramarital affair. This response opened the door to exploring the subtle differences between emotional and physical relationships within the context of hybrid identity and cultural displacement. Samita guided the class through critical perspectives and character analysis, encouraging empathy and a richer appreciation of the complexities involved.
Another notable example is Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, a complex drama centered on ritual suicide. Cross-cultural comparisons helped students grasp themes of duty, sacrifice, and colonial misunderstanding. By inviting them to examine Yoruba traditions alongside their own cultural values, students developed a deeper, more respectful understanding of the play.
This approach emphasizes contextual engagement, critical inquiry, and creating space for diverse voices and perspectives. When students connect personally with literature, their analysis becomes more thoughtful, meaningful, and transformative.
Samita believes that IGCSE English Literature and First Language provide a strong foundation for students moving on to IBDP English A: Language & Literature. The IGCSE framework develops essential analytical skills alongside language abilities while encouraging critical thinking. It guides students beyond simple description or assertion, inviting them to explore how language features create meaning. Important elements such as Writer’s Effect, Directed Writing, and Extended Writing prepare students to engage more deeply with texts at the IBDP level. By the time they enter the IB program, students are generally well-equipped to undertake sustained interpretation and offer insightful analysis and evaluation of textual features and authorial choices.
Several key differences distinguish the two programs:
The level of challenge in IGCSE, taught in Grades 9 and 10, is naturally less intense compared to the IBDP English A course, which functions at a pre-university standard. The IBDP curriculum demands greater depth in analysis, conceptual understanding, and independent thinking.
The scope and focus of IBDP English A: Language & Literature cover a broader and more integrated study of language alongside literature. It emphasizes critical analysis, global cultural perspectives, and a wide variety of text types, including both literary and non-literary works. In contrast, IGCSE tends to separate literary analysis from language development, placing more weight on creativity, comprehension, and expressive writing.
While both programs cultivate awareness of audience and purpose, the IBDP expands this with attention to non-literary texts such as advertisements, speeches, social media posts, and opinion columns. Students analyze how language functions across different contexts and media, requiring heightened cultural and contextual understanding.
The IB program organizes prescribed texts around conceptual themes like Time and Space, Intertextuality, and Readers, Writers Texts, inviting exploration of literature through global, historical, and philosophical perspectives. IGCSE selects texts for their literary merit but places less emphasis on overarching conceptual frameworks.
Ultimately, IGCSE lays the groundwork, while the IBDP calls for a more comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and nuanced engagement with language alongside literature. Teaching both has offered Samita valuable insight into the progression of students’ analytical skills and their deepening connection with texts.
Samita requires only one thing from her students: they must enter her classroom with an open mind and a genuine respect for cultures different from their own. Without this openness, developing critical thinking and analytical skills in a culturally diverse setting becomes nearly impossible. Students are encouraged to express their opinions freely while sharing their cultural perspectives, all the while listening attentively to others. Samita introduces materials that reflect a broad spectrum of voices, experiences, and viewpoints, ensuring that students engage continuously with a variety of worldviews.
One of her main approaches involves comparative analysis to deepen understanding. When exploring themes like identity, power, or conflict, she pairs Western literary texts with TED Talks, blog posts, or film clips from non-Western contexts. This method helps students connect personally with the subject matter while challenging their assumptions and inviting multiple interpretations. Real-world issues such as mental health, gender equality, and social justice are woven into discussions, helping students link literature with the realities they encounter outside the classroom.
Samita uses Socratic questioning, group debates, and reflective journaling to encourage students to move beyond surface-level analysis. Peer-led seminars and collaborative projects provide opportunities for critical examination of texts while honoring diverse opinions. She places strong emphasis on metacognitive strategies, prompting students to reflect not only on what they think but also on how and why their thoughts take shape.
Her ultimate aim is to nurture analytical thinkers who are also empathetic global citizens. She wants her students to leave the classroom equipped to engage critically with diverse texts, question dominant narratives, and express their ideas with confidence and cultural sensitivity.
Recognizing that every student learns differently, Samita believes engagement begins with relevance. She consciously connects lessons to students’ personal interests, whether sports, media, or social justice, to make literary analysis more accessible and meaningful. Many of her male students, for example, are passionate about cricket, football, and boxing, so she incorporates texts and commentaries by figures like Stephen Fry, Muhammad Ali, and sports blogs to draw parallels with literary themes. For those interested in gender issues, she uses examples such as Nike’s #JustDoIt campaign or Bollywood item songs to spark conversations about feminism, empowerment, and the male gaze. Advertisements featuring David and Victoria Beckham have also served as useful tools for discussing objectification in media.
Samita firmly believes literature cannot be studied in isolation from the world around us. Students need to engage with a variety of cultural and real-life references, films, TED Talks, BBC Intelligence Squared debates, and blogs, to develop a nuanced, global perspective. For instance, she recommends the film Joker to open discussions about mental health or Kramer vs. Kramer to explore women’s empowerment and the complexities of personal choice.
Through this thoughtful, inclusive approach, Samita creates a learning environment where literature becomes a gateway to understanding the world and the diverse people within it.
Samita’s teaching philosophy centers on inquiry-based learning, where students are encouraged to explore literary texts and themes on their own terms through questioning, investigation, and reflection. She firmly believes that students learn best when actively involved in this process. Her role is to guide, challenge, and facilitate, rather than dictate. To illustrate this concept, she often uses the MasterChef analogy with her students: just as creating a memorable dish requires more than just ingredients, it demands imagination, vision, knowledge, and skill, literature works similarly. Authors do not write solely to convey a message; rather, it is up to readers to explore, infer, and interpret using their critical faculties and creativity.
In her classroom, inquiry begins with open-ended questioning. Students are encouraged to examine texts from multiple perspectives, considering cultural, historical, and psychological contexts. They are reminded that in literature, there are no wrong answers as long as their interpretations are supported by textual evidence and sound reasoning. This approach not only builds analytical skills but also fosters confidence and independent thought.
Ownership of learning is paramount in her classroom. From the outset, she makes it clear that she is not there to provide easy answers. Instead, she challenges students to grapple with ambiguity, engage in discussions, and defend their viewpoints. This can be challenging, especially in an education support center where there may be an unspoken expectation that a tutor should simply do the work for the student. However, she resists this pressure because her goal is not to offer shortcuts—it is to empower learners to think, question, and grow.
Inquiry-based learning transforms students from passive recipients into active, thoughtful readers capable of constructing meaning rather than just consuming it. This transformation is what makes teaching truly rewarding.
Samita’s approach to literature transforms the classroom experience by helping students connect stories to real-world issues and personal experiences. This perspective encourages students to see texts not merely as artistic creations but as meaningful reflections on the human experience.
One novel that has sparked deep and thoughtful conversations in her class is Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys. The story’s examination of institutional racism, abuse, and the failures within the justice system aligns closely with ongoing discussions about systemic inequality, racial profiling, and the erasure of history. As students explored the difficult journey of Elwood and Turner at the Nickel Academy, they made strong links to current movements like Black Lives Matter, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the broader struggle for racial justice.
The class also delved into the idea of moral duality, how hope and survival often conflict within oppressive systems—and how silence from institutions allows violence to continue unchecked. These conversations inspired students to think about how history is recorded, whose stories are remembered, and the importance of preserving the memory of injustice.
To deepen their understanding, Samita introduced articles, podcasts, and interviews about the real Dozier School for Boys, the historical basis for the novel. These materials helped students place the story in its historical context and encouraged critical reflection on the role of government power and responsibility in both fiction and reality.
By engaging with works like The Nickel Boys, Samita creates a classroom where students sharpen their analytical skills while growing in empathy, historical insight, and ethical awareness. Literature becomes a space where critical thinking meets global awareness, a place to ask not only what happened but why it matters.
For Samita, one of the most significant challenges in leading an English department has been balancing the dual role of colleague and supervisor. She recognized early that authority, when wielded without care, risks eroding teamwork. Instead of letting hierarchy dictate interactions, she prioritized maintaining open communication and mutual respect. Her experience showed her that leaders who focus solely on critique, rather than guidance, risk disconnecting from their teams.
Her approach centers on support and trust. Teachers often face demanding schedules, competing priorities, and the constant pressure of student needs. Adding rigidity without offering practical help, she observed, only fuels frustration. Samita made it a priority to provide resources, share workload pressures, and step in personally when required. She actively seeks feedback, initiates tough discussions when needed, and views asking for assistance not as a flaw but as a way to model accountability.
Collaboration and delegation form the backbone of her leadership philosophy. Assigning tasks based on individual strengths, she believes, not only streamlines work but empowers team members to take ownership of their roles. This method ensures tasks are handled efficiently while reinforcing trust within the group.
Most importantly, Samita learned that effective leadership isn’t about universal approval. Clarity, fairness, and transparency matter more than popularity. By focusing on shared goals and ensuring her team feels valued, she cultivates an environment where student success becomes a collective achievement, driven by motivated educators who know their voices matter.
Samita integrates contemporary global issues into literature discussions, making this practice central to her teaching approach. The International Baccalaureate program’s Individual Oral component, for example, encourages students to analyze the treatment of a global issue they identify in both literary and non-literary extracts. This method helps students see literature as a reflection of the world, deepening their understanding when they connect texts to pressing global concerns.
When students study Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, they explore themes of immigration, identity, and cultural dislocation, linking these to ongoing discussions about diaspora communities and the complexities of hybrid identity. Dystopian works such as The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984 prompt students to draw parallels with issues of authoritarianism, gender rights, surveillance, and censorship that remain relevant in society today.
Texts by Han Kang, including The Vegetarian and Human Acts, present themes that intersect with contemporary global matters such as bodily autonomy, state-sponsored violence, trauma, and resistance. In The Vegetarian, the theme of bodily autonomy is examined through the protagonist’s personal choices, which become a point of social and familial control. This leads to broader classroom discussions about gender dynamics, mental health, and societal expectations—topics that resonate across cultures. The protagonist’s quiet defiance becomes a starting point for conversations about bodily agency and individual choice, especially in patriarchal or conformist societies.
Human Acts moves students with its portrayal of trauma passed through generations and the scars left by state violence. The class places the Gwangju Uprising in a global context, comparing it to other instances of civil unrest and suppression, such as Tiananmen Square and recent pro-democracy protests worldwide. These discussions highlight how fiction can serve as a vehicle for historical memory, ethical reflection, and social justice.
Samita also introduces non-literary texts—news articles, documentaries, and interviews, to help students connect the emotional truths of fiction with the realities of global events. This intertextual approach not only sharpens analytical skills but also nurtures empathy and global awareness. Students are encouraged to ask: Whose story is being told? Who remains unheard? How does this text echo what is happening in the world today?
Through these discussions, students come to view literature not as a static collection of works, but as an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human in a complex and changing world.
Samita’s method for offering constructive feedback draws from educational research, including John Hattie’s Visible Learning and N. Nguyen’s Feedback: The Key to Better Teaching and Learning. A central lesson from these works is that feedback should extend beyond reviewing past work to actively shaping future efforts. This principle aligns with the perspective of her former principal, Mr. Kris Bhatt of NPS International, who stressed that impactful feedback functions as “feedforward.”
She applies the feedback framework developed by Hattie and Helen Timperley in The Power of Feedback, which centers on three guiding questions:
This structure ensures feedback remains specific, goal-oriented, and focused on growth. Samita emphasizes both outcomes and methods, highlighting strengths while suggesting adjustments to approach. She prioritizes students’ self-assessment, helping them develop awareness and confidence in their abilities.
Drafting serves as a cornerstone of this process. Students submit multiple revisions, each iteration deepening their engagement with the task and reflection on feedback. The recurring question—“What can I do to make this better?”—transforms learning into a continuous cycle of refinement. This practice nurtures a growth mindset, encouraging students to view education as an evolving journey rather than a fixed outcome.
By framing feedback as a collaborative conversation rather than a final judgment, Samita empowers learners to take charge of their progress and pursue meaningful development. The emphasis remains on clarity, purpose, and the steady progression toward well-defined goals.
Although Samita’s current position at the tutorial centre is focused solely on English, she continues to champion the value of interdisciplinary learning. Literature and language, in her view, are naturally linked to fields such as history, politics, philosophy, psychology, science, and mathematics. She regularly draws on these connections to deepen her students’ engagement and understanding.
For instance, while guiding students through dystopian novels like The Handmaid’s Tale or 1984, she weaves in discussions about political ideologies, surveillance technologies, and the historical moments that shaped these works. When teaching poetry, she often introduces visual art, such as the works of Banksy, Barbara Kruger, Newsha Tavakolian, and Patty Carroll, or music, illustrating how creative expression can cross traditional boundaries.
A striking example is her approach to Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife. Each poem in this collection reimagines historical, mythical, or biblical figures from a feminist perspective, inviting discussions that reach far beyond literary analysis. While exploring poems like “Mrs Faust” or “Queen Herod,” students investigate the historical and religious origins of these figures and examine how Duffy subverts their stories. This opens the floor to conversations rooted in history, religion, and gender studies, allowing students to see how literature can challenge and reshape cultural narratives.
Samita also encourages her students to use psychological and sociological perspectives, exploring themes of identity, voice, and power dynamics, to better understand the motivations behind each speaker’s viewpoint. For example, during the study of Duffy’s “Mrs Midas,” students examine the classical myth of King Midas as depicted in visual art, from Greek pottery to Renaissance paintings, and compare these portrayals to Duffy’s reinterpretation from a female perspective.
Through this, students consider how different media influence our understanding of the same story: while traditional depictions often glorify Midas’s wealth and punishment, Duffy’s version centers on Mrs Midas’s grief, isolation, and quiet anger. The class also discusses how myths, often preserved through patriarchal perspectives, have historically excluded women’s voices, an absence Duffy addresses with intention and force.
At other times, students analyze how archetypes are portrayed in visual media or contrast narrative voices with historical records, prompting reflection on truth, bias, and authorship. When studying The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Samita applies psychological and sociological frameworks. The novel’s narrator, a man of dual identity, a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy, struggles with a fragmented sense of self, which becomes the central conflict.
Here, students explore psychological concepts such as cognitive dissonance, identity formation, and internalized colonialism, as well as the social legacy of war, displacement, and the immigrant experience. This approach encourages students to engage with the text both as literature and as social commentary, helping them understand how archetypes evolve, how power shapes storytelling, and how literature can serve as a form of historical resistance. It also sparks critical conversations about authorship: Who tells the story? Whose version becomes accepted as truth?
In nonfiction and media analysis, Samita’s students examine advertisements or speeches in relation to economic and social issues, integrating real-world knowledge into their study of literature. Documentaries and journalistic reports, such as those by Marie Colvin or Anderson Cooper, help students connect with global events and crises.
Even without colleagues from other subjects, Samita designs lessons that encourage students to make connections across academic domains. This approach not only enriches their interpretation of texts but also helps them appreciate how literature is deeply embedded in the broader human experience, historical, political, psychological, and cultural. Her previous collaborations with teachers in History and Global Perspectives at international schools have shaped her lessons, ensuring that intellectual curiosity and cross-disciplinary thinking remain central to her teaching.
For Samita, interdisciplinary thinking is more than collaboration; it is about modeling for students how knowledge is interconnected and encouraging them to draw on ideas from different subjects. This practice helps students develop a more nuanced understanding of literature and the world around them, while also fostering critical thinking, creativity, and a lifelong love of learning.
Samita approaches curriculum design as a thoughtful balance between academic requirements and creative exploration. She views structured frameworks and imaginative teaching not as opposing forces, but as partners that enhance learning when carefully integrated. Curriculum standards provide clarity, ensuring students meet key objectives while building essential skills. Yet within these guidelines, Samita crafts lessons that prioritize curiosity, adaptability, and student agency.
For instance, when designing IBDP English units, she anchors them in universal themes like identity or power. These concepts act as springboards, enabling learners to connect literary analysis to real-world issues, personal experiences, and interdisciplinary ideas. A study of The Sympathizer might explore cultural displacement, while a project on The World’s Wife could involve reimagining poems through modern social lenses, all while aligning with assessment criteria.
Flexibility remains central to her process. By embedding regular checkpoints for reflection and informal feedback, she adapts lessons to student needs. If a discussion unexpectedly deepens or a writing task reveals fresh perspectives, she adjusts pacing to nurture those moments. This responsiveness keeps lessons grounded yet dynamic, allowing discovery without sacrificing academic goals.
The result is a classroom where structure supports creativity rather than stifling it. Students engage deeply when they see their voices shaping the learning journey, proving that rigorous education and inventive thinking can thrive together.
Samita believes the key to motivating disengaged students lies in forming genuine bonds and linking lessons to their lives, interests, and goals. She starts by understanding students not merely as learners but as people, taking time to learn about their hobbies, passions, and preferences. This insight allows her to craft lessons that connect with them personally.
One method she uses involves weaving humor or pop culture into lessons to unpack complex ideas. For instance, she might play clips from comedians like George Carlin or Robin Williams, masters of sharp, insightful language, to discuss satire, irony, or social critique. This approach lightens the mood while showing students how language shapes the world around them.
She also ties literature to real-life themes they care about, such as identity, power, technology, or belonging. By grounding lessons in current issues and asking for their viewpoints, students feel their voices matter. This often transforms how they engage with the material.
For Samita, disengagement isn’t defiance, it’s a signal that relevance remains undiscovered. Her focus is on uncovering that spark of curiosity, then using it to guide students toward deeper understanding.
Academic honesty forms the foundation of true learning, and Samita prioritizes this principle from the first tutorial. She emphasizes original thinking and the ethical obligations tied to scholarly work, moving beyond warnings about plagiarism to actively equip students with practical skills for ethical writing.
Her method centers on valuing the process as much as the result. Students learn to brainstorm, draft, and revise their work collaboratively, understanding writing as a journey of exploration rather than a race to meet deadlines. This approach nurtures their unique voices and self-assurance, reducing reliance on shortcuts or unoriginal content.
For IBDP students, Samita dedicates time to teaching precise citation and referencing techniques. Through hands-on exercises, they practice paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting sources, ensuring they can ethically integrate external ideas into their analysis.
She employs open-ended questions and Socratic discussions to test the depth of their understanding. If a student struggles to articulate a concept, they revisit the material together, strengthening comprehension. Clear boundaries define her role: she guides, challenges, and supports students but never writes or rewrites their work. Her goal is to cultivate independent thinkers and skilled writers, ensuring their success stems from genuine effort and growth.
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