Teacher Feature: Introduction to the World Within the Classroom from Ms. Majumder

Today, you might have learned that Ilora Majumder was one of the few teachers selected as part of the New Staff Showcase Initiative. But as you take a glance in the humanities office, one may see some political stickers and trinkets by Ms. Majumder’s desk, along with some photos of her hometown of Canada. Her identity within the lounge you had caught your eye upon is just as obvious in her teaching style in the classroom.

Ms. Majumder is a Social Studies teacher of 13 years at Queens High School for the Sciences. Currently teaching AP Human Geography, AP Government and Politics and AP World History, and having taught courses Pre-AP World History, International Relations, AP Government and Politics, and Government/Economic Studies, she notes herself as someone who hopes for her students to explore the nature of society through her unique teaching style.

One of the reasons why Ms. Majumder has stayed so long as an instructor because of the small but bright student population: with this unique circumstance brings in the opportunity to have bonding and more easily make connections with not only the material, but clearly their life at hand. 

“My teaching style is very conversational,” says Ms. Majumder, when asked about her teaching philosophy. “I like to have discussions in my class and I like to laugh”. This conversational nature she has opens up her class time to use various online resources such as simulations, maps, and news articles. In AP World History, for example, students had to read two New York Times articles of different decades about the Iranian Revolution in order to get her students to understand not only the general concept of the revolution, but also the lenses these journalists took to write these articles given the vastly different states of the world at the time. 

Throughout the interview, Ms. Majumder herself had particularly empathized with her interest in politics and encouraged her students to be more politically active both in awareness and in practice through local policy. Through this interest reins her usage of websites describing modern politics and impacts happening in the world at this very moment. Some of these websites she had brought up during our interview was ‘Constitutional Center’, a multimedia website considering various constitutional and political topics and various points of view within said topics. 

Due to her classroom setup, some of the students in this school had developed a close bond with Ms. Majumder and accredits her to a great deal of their current life. A former student of hers, and current junior Samiha Rahman had mentioned how Ms. Majumder made AP World History more digestible. 

“I noticed that she can skillfully use vocal tone to stress some of the historical events and I can still remember them vividly after the class; […] she made learning [AP World History] more interesting than I thought it would be like.” 

Along with helping her students construct mental timelines, she also urges her students to experience the outside world. When asked about a favorite experience in Ms. Majumder’s class, another student, Josephine Ng, a current junior, had mentioned the mandated museum trips Ms. Majumder had once done for Pre-AP World History as an assessment grade. 

“While [those weren’t] experiences in her class, she was the one who intentionally carved those opportunities out for us— opportunities to bring our acquaintanceships to friendships into deep connections”. 

Akin to politics is her interest in the various voices found within QHSS. When asked about her favorite memories, one that had particularly stood out was a virtual bulletin board the QHSS History Department had done during the pandemic shortly after the murder of George Floyd. Tensions between Asian and African Americans were at a high shortly after this incident, so these bulletins had been created to express the various emotions these minorities had felt after the discrimination they had experienced due to these incidents. According to her, it allowed students to not only properly vent out these emotions, but also hear other’s views— strengthening a very highly valued community bond.

Prior to joining the QHSS faculty, Majumder had gotten her degrees in Political Science and Education in Canada, and had started her initial teaching career in Toronto. She had taken a sabbatical to get her degree in International Relations in City College, before quitting to pursue a career in the city she had now loved. In New York, she had taught at Henry Street School for International Studies and Manhattan High School, the latter of which had taught emotionally disturbed students. 

“Being at [Manhattan High School] has made me more understanding of student’s situations. Many of them had clung to their teachers like they were their parents due to them being absent or harmful to their children”. She also notes that due to this bond, her lessons had slowly become less rigid, and more adjacent to how it is today. 

As this year continues onward and more school years soon follow, Ms. Majumder is looking forward to enriching her students not just in the recanting of global events: “I really want students to find a space with me where they can become politically [active].” As you leave the humanities office, perhaps you might consider the possibility of exploring more of what’s going on in your own backyard.