One more CSET!! I made it my goal when I started taking classes for my teaching credential at UC Irvine to become credentialed to teach all of the science content areas. Last month, I passed the Earth and Space Science II CSET.
Here’s what it looks like now!
I’m now credentialed to teach General Science, Biology/Life Science, Chemistry, and Earth and Space Sciences! I started taking the CSETs when I was preparing to get my credential and passed general science first, and then took biology and chemistry because I was the most confident in those subjects. It helped that I was a biology major because I was able to pass without using extra resources other than my course notes. I also was required to take general chemistry, organic chemistry, and a course of physical chemistry with labs, which helped with the chemistry CSET.
Earth and Space Science was a lot harder for me because I never took a earth or space science class ever, including in high school.
Growth Mindset
There’s a gap between 9/19/2017 and 1/17/2020 that the list of exams doesn’t show. I attempted Earth and Space Science actually once before in 2018 and actually failed that by 17 points. I just looked at the CTC list of competencies/required knowledge for the exam and made a notebook answering each of the bullets. This method was useful in gaining a general understanding of earth and space science, but I realized I failed because I couldn’t make connections between each of the competencies. I could memorize all of the different types of clouds, but not understand why clouds were formed. I could understand different weather fronts, but I couldn’t predict what weather an area experiencing an occluded front, for example, would experience because I didn’t deeply understand the content.
This really took a lot of growth mindset on my end. As teachers, I notice we often tell students to have grit and put on a growth mindset, but it’s one of those things that it’s easier said than done. It was hard to come back from not passing because I didn’t want to do it again and have to re-study what I put so much time into the first time. I was reminded to push forward and get back up each time I would tell my students to have a growth mindset and try again when they failed. I had to introspect and really think about whether or not I was living out what I was telling my students to do and that was a motivating factor for me.
A couple of my students asked me how I did when I found out my results the second time and I told them I passed! Then, I told them I actually failed the first time and this was my second try and they were all surprised. They figured I’d know everything because I’m a teacher. It was great to see that they began to humanize me, rather than think I’m perfect in school because of my occupation. Now, when I tell them to have a growth mindset and retake one of my exams because they didn’t do well the first time on it, I noticed they’re more inclined to because they saw I had one during this CSET.
What’s the point?
I really had to figure out my why for being credentialed in the sciences beyond just one of them. I realized in college that science is like a great story. Each of the 4 science disciplines taught in school tells a different aspect of life and the world.
Physics tells us how the physical world works and why things behave the way that they do.
Chemistry takes what we know about matter and breaks it down into understanding the substances that compose that matter. It talks about the properties of substances and how they interact, behave, combine, etc.
Biology tells a story of life. We exist in the physical world and biology tells the story of how our bodies work and how we interact with our surroundings.
Earth and Space Science focuses on the earth and other planets that we exist in and studies how we came to be and how the elements of the earth formed.
I realized that through teaching biology, you have to understand some chemistry, earth science, and physics. To teach chemistry, you have to understand some biology, physics, and earth science. And this continues for all of the science disciplines. Students sometimes see each of their science classes as individual and disconnected from one another, but they all build upon each other and understanding one helps you understand another. I wanted to learn all of them so that I can make these connections and help students make these connections. The more I learn about one subject, like earth science, the more I learn about biology.
My why for spending time to learn each subject is so that I can make connections and build upon my understanding of science as a whole. I have one more left and I’m super excited to study for Physics!
Daniel K Lieu, Ph.D. 
Leave a comment