Celebrating Diversity in the Classroom

The problem with education today is a lack of using students' creativity in the classroom on behalf of professors and students, therefore missing out on using their diversity to build a better and more interesting education. For example, in big lecture halls the individual is lost in the mass. In smaller classrooms, as well, a few stand out, but rarely is the diversity brought by students' different backgrounds used efficiently to create a more interesting learning environment in today's college classrooms.

I have an example, though, where I have found the use of diversity, it was in CS103, through the use of creativity. In class, many people participated and what they contributed was different, but still our diversity played a small role in the everyday classroom. Instead, it played a major role in the completion of our final project, a Web Page built from the same set of tools which we had learned throughout the semester but we had free reign on how to design, it with only a few basic rules. It tapped into our creativity and the end products were quite dissimilar from each other. Some people built personal sites, while others built sites for businesses or non-profit organizations; some people built theirs from scratch using html and java, while others used templates; some were interactive, some were basic; but they were all unique and expressed their developer's personality. Our sites were different because we were in turn different, we were all individuals with different interests due to our backgrounds and personal experiences. We came from different cultures and upbringings, and our race and gender affected us differently. Therefore, we expressed ourselves differently. 

I believe that our creativity is what allows us to express our own individuality more than anything else. Mr. Mundel said, "without this creativity, individuals cannot express their own backgrounds and often get stuck in the boring mold that is modern education." I agree with him because without creativity we cannot express ourselves and therefore, we cannot learn and work together in the classroom to have a more engaging and interesting learning experience. We are stuck in an isolated bubble where our learning derives only from our textbook and our professor, in a one way flow of communication. I believe that the modern classroom lacks creativity and if we could find a way to integrate it with our modern education, students and professors would benefit from the engagement it would bring.