Seema Sapru is the Principal of The Heritage School, Kolkata, with over 30 years of experience in teaching and leadership.
She holds master’s degrees in Chemistry and Education, a Post Graduate Diploma in School Leadership Management, and certifications from Harvard and UCLA.
Since joining The Heritage School in 2007, she has championed a progressive, inclusive education that blends traditional values with innovative learning.
Under her leadership, the school emphasizes holistic development, academic excellence, and the nurturing of responsible global citizens.
Seema has received multiple awards for her contributions to education, including “Principal of the Year – India” by India Today.
Key Takeaway:
1. “Be Your Own Light” – Education Rooted in Self-Discovery
At the heart of The Heritage School lies the philosophy Ahmadi — “Be Your Own Light.” Sima Sanyal believes true education begins when students learn to reflect, make independent choices, and find answers within themselves rather than depending on external validation.
2. Individual Attention in a Scalable System
Despite its size, the school maintains small class sizes (18–30 students), ensuring every learner receives personalized attention. The structure fosters deeper teacher-student relationships and nurtures intellectual, emotional, and social development.
3. Tradition Meets Technology
From robotics labs to tribal artisans teaching woodcraft, the school integrates high-tech learning with traditional arts — creating a rare balance between innovation and cultural roots.
4. Beyond Marks: Project & Research-Based Learning
Moving away from rote memorization, the school adopts a project-based learning system. Students collaborate in teams, assessed through individualized rubrics — promoting creativity, critical thinking, and communication over mere scores.
5. Multiple Intelligences, One Vision
Drawing from Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Sanyal emphasizes that every child has unique strengths — linguistic, logical, kinesthetic, spatial, or interpersonal — and schools must celebrate, not suppress, this diversity.
6. Equality Through Shared Experiences
All students — regardless of background — eat the same food prepared on campus and travel by school bus. This conscious policy eliminates social hierarchies, teaching equality, humility, and empathy through lived experience.
7. Emotional Intelligence at the Core
With full-time in-house behavioral counselors, emotional wellbeing is treated as a pillar of learning. Life-skill classes, circle time, and open conversations about mental health normalize vulnerability and build resilience.
8. Teachers Who Never Stop Learning
At Heritage, professional development isn’t optional — it’s culture. Twice a month, teachers attend training sessions on innovation, AI integration, classroom storytelling, and leadership, ensuring they evolve alongside their students.
9. Inclusivity as a Way of Life
The Heritage School pioneered inclusive education in Kolkata, integrating children with autism, dyslexia, and other learning differences into mainstream classes — supported by 18 trained special educators who tailor learning to individual needs.
10. Leadership as Storytelling – The Kathak Philosophy
Describing her leadership style through Kathak, Sima Sanyal blends discipline with storytelling. For her, education — like dance — is an art form that thrives on rhythm, connection, and empathy.
Transcript:
Chethan K (Host): Hi ma'am. Welcome to EdexLive Podcast. As Principal of The Heritage School for over 15 years, what core philosophies have guided your approach to evolving education in the contemporary and globalized world?
Seema Sapru (Guest): Actually, when you join a school, you check out with the school management, you find out what are the ethos of the school, what it is that they believe in, and then accordingly, whatever the core values that they've thought of, you work on those.
There is a vision and a mission of the school. Motto of the school is "Aatma Devo Bhava", which means ‘Be Your Own Light’.
So this is something that I firmly believe in because we have to give them understanding that they shouldn't be dependent on others to take decisions or the value system should never be compromised just because they feel that they need to be heard, they need to be seen, they need to be noticed. Whatever they do, they should keep that in mind that if I am taking a decision, I have to get back to the vision, mission of the school. I have to get back to the motto of the school and say, it says ‘Be Your Own Light’.
So whenever I'm confused, I go back and I see.
So if I have to be my own light, I have to find the answers within myself, let me reflect, go back, look at the vision, mission of the school. It says that you have to look after humanity, and so it is body, mind, spirit, everything you have to work on and then take decisions. That's what I feel is very important.
Chethan K (Host): The Heritage School balances tradition with cutting-edge technology. How do you see this blend benefiting students’ development in both academic and non-academic realms?
Seema Sapru (Guest): So, if I start telling you about the kind of things we do, you'll say that I'm bragging about my school. You see, I don't think you've ever heard of a school which has maybe 32 to 35 sports teachers and more than 30 activity teachers apart from that.
These activity and sports teachers don't do any of the academic classes, and there are over 300 academic teachers as well.
So the school has grown, ideas have grown, the number of coordinators has grown, the number of people who ensure that teaching, learning, and individualized attention is never compromised.
We started with about 18 to 20 children per teacher with another helper in the pre-primary classes. We still have 18 to 20 children in pre-primary.
The maximum number of children in grade 12 is 30.
So we have increased numbers, but the size of the section has not increased, keeping the individualized attention.
The best part is that there are linguistic, scientific, academic, co-curricular skills and many abilities children work on.
Children get so many opportunities and exposure. Even if today you ask me, am I archer? No, but I know what happens in archery, I know about bow and arrow, targets.
Many people have never seen archery or rifle shooting or other activities like kho-kho happening.
When you live this every single day, you see robotics labs, people from tribal areas coming every day to teach skills like woodcraft and lac-work—a dying art, so there is this balance.
People have to come to see exactly what the school is about. You walk in the corridors and find children coming to give hugs, high fives, and most of them touching your feet, it's like family, very wonderful.
Chethan K (Host): You have introduced research-based assignments and project-based curriculum to move beyond memorization. What challenges did you face in this shift, and what impact have you observed?
Seema Sapru (Guest): The thing was, coordinators and teachers thought this was a bolt from the blue, something new ma'am wanted to do, but I think it was adults who resisted, not children, because we've all studied in traditional convents and weren't exposed to this. So we all needed authentication to understand this was right. We have a wonderful team of teachers, educators and coordinators who asked many questions till they understood the system would work.
Initially, it was tough to get teachers to trust the system.
Once teachers and coordinators were on board and we started rolling it out, parents were upset. They felt children grouped together meant their top child was contributing and others aren't, yet getting marks.
We had rubrics for each child with criteria and parameters so that each child was assessed individually.
People think their child is best because they were top of the class but sometimes bright children express themselves well but not in writing. Writing is one of many talents.
Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory tells us there are linguistic, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and logical thinkers, each child having their own strengths.
Chethan K (Host): Emotional connection and social skills are emphasized even in daily activities like shared meals at your day boarding facility. How does this aspect contribute to overall student wellbeing and growth?
Seema Sapru (Guest): We start at seven, finish at four, It's something like that, and all children sit and have their breakfast, lunch, and evening snack together, and they all travel only by bus.
In our school, children are not allowed to bring anything from home.
All the food is cooked here in school and is given to all the students and teachers, all of us eat together, so that is why it's a day boarding school.
They are not allowed to come by their own transport, they can only come by the buses because the who's who of Calcutta studies here, everybody. So they all bring their huge cars and they'll only compare, you know, what car does your father have and what car does my mommy have and this, that, and the other.
So we are equalizing everything, and that is why everybody comes by bus.
Everybody eats the same thing. They're not allowed to bring anything from home.
When you talk about emotional intelligence, emotionally how they're connected with each other?
Well, we have five in-house behavioural counsellors. They come from seven in the morning till four in the evening. Four of them take classes with children, which are called life skill classes, where they're talking about sensitivity. They talk about respect, bullying, social media, your speech, the words you choose to describe certain things, your study habits, your work life, your school and family balance.
They talk about everything on earth, we also have circle time where children talk about which teachers they like, and everything that they face in class and at home.
Children today, especially in our school, there is no taboo on going to the behaviour counsellor and saying I need help because I do that several times. We keep talking in the assembly and say you know, I met a parent and I didn't know what to do with that parent. I didn't know how to deal with a certain situation. It's not that, you know, everywhere it says, oh, she’s mad, so she's going to a counsellor.
No, we feel all of us are normal but all of us have our areas where we need help.
When I’m not able to deal with a situation, I go to the expert and say how do I deal with this situation? Can you help? and they do help.
Chethan K (Host): In your experience, how important is continuous professional development for teachers?
Seema Sapru (Guest): Professional development is a part of our school and twice a month, we have professional development for all of us.
We bring people from outside and from within the school, sometimes I’m taking a session; sometimes a teacher is taking a session.
We wear different hats at different times because we all need to learn and get better at our work.
We have 10 days orientation every year before we start a new session so we bring in a lot of experts.
On 2nd & 3rd November, Professor HC Verma from IIT Kanpur, and is supposed to be the god of physics, is coming to our school.
He’s training us on how to use simple things in the school, at home, in the classroom to make learning physics or any subject more interesting with lots of examples and demos. Mr Rajput will come for mathematics.
Recently, we had people coming from various subjects, not just subjects but for professional development and personal grooming is also required,
CPD which is Continuous Professional Development because if teachers don’t learn, who else will learn?
We have been learning about AI, artificial intelligence, and we are working a lot on that, and that excites me.
I recently took a session on the book, The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. He talks about how to create a culture of winning and making a happy, successful team.
We are working on that and I’m very excited about it. We are also making our artificial intelligence policy to know what is accepted and what is not by students and teachers.
Chethan K (Host): India's education system faces challenges with inclusivity and ensuring quality education for all. What systematic reform do you believe are key to addressing these challenges effectively in the next decade?
Seema Sapru (Guest): We were pioneers to start a school that is inclusive.
We knowingly take children who have special needs like autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, Asperger syndrome, and various other physical or mental challenges.
Children who cannot write examinations in the mainstream curriculum.
We are happy to train them in social abilities because these children generally can't make friends.
We have 18 special education teachers who have done their B.Ed in special education, so they know exactly what methods and pedagogies work with children who have autism, dyslexia, or mathematics phobia.
They use those methods and these children are mainstreamed and they pass class 10 and 12 from our school.
Chethan K (Host): How does The Heritage School nurture leadership and empathy among students preparing them to be responsible global citizens?
Seema Sapru (Guest): There are subtle things we do.
First, there are no exams till grade eight.
Secondly, we don’t follow any syllabus in the pre-primary years; we make our own syllabus while other schools follow a standard one.
Writing is clerical work, manual labour. I believe reading requires comprehension and mental ability, not writing.
So, we don't make children write in the first couple of years; they look at everything they can read.
Many children in class three and four can write all answers if someone reads the questions to them.
So we emphasize reading abilities, social abilities, and children being able to eat by themselves. If you come to our school, three-year-old children all eat themselves, eat all vegetables, know how to eat paratha, how to brush teeth, how to use the toilet, and how to help themselves.
These basic skills build confidence. Our syllabus is very different from other schools that make children write questions and answers only.
Chethan K (Host): If you could describe your leadership style as a dance form, what would that be and why?
Seema Sapru (Guest): Kathak, Kathak, Kathak….. What happens is we are generally in Kathak, you know, there's a lot of, Kathak is actually a storytelling exercise.
I am a storyteller, you see, I'm a chemistry teacher, but I have for each you know, topic, each theme, I always had a story to tell them and that is how children, you know, enjoyed my chemistry classes.
And, one more thing is very, very important here with Kathak is the discipline part and the discipline part is very important and remembers in Kathak there is ‘Guru’ & ‘Shishya’ relationship.
I'm a Kathak dancer, and I did learn Kathak also when I was a small child, and of course I can't demonstrate it because I've forgotten everything and I'm a very bad dancer.
So I'm a Kathak dancer as far as as a teacher, as a leader.
Chethan K (Host): Thank you very much, ma'am. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Seema Sapru (Guest): You are welcome.