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Communication and Collaboration in Secondary Science Classrooms:

Like Conor, Traditional instruction is something I knew and experienced during my time as a student.  Lecturing through PowerPoints and drawing chemical structures on the board is what I knew, but not the best way for everyone to learn.  I would like to see myself grow in the area of communication and collaboration.
In my classroom at Cristo Rey over the summer, I looked at projects that might interest my students.  Had my class been a little bit longer, I would have loved to use  an online video chatting method to have my students communicate with real chemists to talk about their molecule and reaction that they picked.
In the world, we live in cell phones, twitter, and instagram have become the most prevalent in our students lives, and finding a way to connect twitter/instagram and communication and science is something I hope to look forward to in my class and projects.
Now, that I am more aware of the 4 C's I will hope to plan lessons where students can collaborate among each other and among others in the professional world through video chatting and collaborative tools like google slides/docs.

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Putting more of an emphasis on Creativity:
Being a History teacher, it is very easy to get caught in a routine, lecturing with the same PowerPoints year after year. "Trying new approaches to get things done" is pertinent in getting students prepared for the world outside of , and after, school. Personally, my first two years were a struggle to get creative; I often relied on my slides and words, and not much else. Traditional teaching/lecture is what I knew. What I can do is better prepare them for a global audience by opening up their options and platforms. As a teacher, giving them different outlets on assignments or projects is a great way to get students to own their learning, and successfully create a learner-centered environment. Even developing different ways to assess each student is a great way to promote student creativity.
I love to now use new outlets with student creativity. Nearpod has been a terrific introduction to my classroom. Students can draw, answer questions with written words and explore places around the world virtually. I have also newly decided to do twitter and Instagram accounts for each of my classes. This is where students are these days and I need to develop creative ways to meet them at the midpoint. Maybe even find a way to effectively institute cell phone use in the classroom; what a world that would be.

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In a social studies classroom, the "C" that does not receive the most emphasis is creativity. To emphasize creativity in my classroom, I would introduce an assignment on a weekly basis where the students are tasked with writing a journal. In this journal, students can reflect on what they have learned from the previous week's lessons and further prove their understanding. Within the journal, they will have a choice in taking the position of either a bystander to a historical event or reliving the experience of an important historical figure. Since there are not journal entries for every event or historical figure, students will have to be creative in developing their entry. This journal can take the shape of a mock letter or journal entry for the person the student selects. From this weekly activity, students will develop their skills in understanding perspective, developing empathy, and thinking about changes in history over time. To integrate technology, this activity should be done in the form of blog posts. The students will have full control over their blogs, the design of their blogs, the inclusion of pictures, and can share their blogs publicly or privately so long as the teacher can view it.
(image from: http://mcmanuskaleyedm310.blogspot.com/2015/03/)

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-"C" I emphasize the least: Critical Thinking
-High School Spanish Classroom (Levels 2 Honors, 3 College Prep, 3 Honors)

-Approach to improve critical thinking within classroom:  A lesson plan in which we exercise problem-finding, and apply it to learning Spanish.
-I would use use my Peace Corps connections to have the students work cross-culturally via technology with teachers in El Salvador. Through Skype, email, slack, padlet, or some other technological platform, they could communicate. Ideally, I’d like it to be verbal to practice their Spanish.  They could come up with problem and a solution together; perhaps teaching each other the opposite language, coming up with ways they can better educate their respective communities on the other one, or how the teachers could better reach their students through the use of technology in the classroom. This particular setting would probably be best in conjunction with Maryland Standard 5.0: Communities (5.1. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.)

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I would like to help students grow in the area of collaboration. I see the need to expand my definition of what it means to collaborate beyond simply assigning group projects in the classroom to having students understand the value of combining different skill sets & perspectives to arrive at a creative solution. I intend to use technology to do this by incorporating Skype or Zoom to have my students speak with students from other schools. Additionally, as a Spanish teacher, I can use this technology to have my students collaborate with native speakers from around the world. I also plan to encourage collaboration across class periods or even grade levels using Google Classroom and collaborative Google tools such as Docs & Slides.