Michigan Teacher of the Year Discusses District-Wide Impact of Eureka Math®

We recently sat down with Candice Jackson—2023–2024 Michigan Teacher of the Year—to learn more about her experience teaching with Eureka Math® and supporting implementation across her district. Candice teaches third grade at Mann Learning Community in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. She facilitates professional development in schools throughout the district as a Master Teacher and delivers Eureka Math²® professional development to teachers nationwide as a Great Minds professional development associate.

What inspired you to become a teacher?

I decided to become a teacher because I grew up in a predominantly white suburb and I didn’t have a lot of African American teachers. I wanted to be the teacher I didn’t have to students who are like me—who are brown or people of color. I think everyone needs to see themselves represented, so that was probably my motivating factor.

How long have you been teaching, and how long have you been using Eureka Math?

I’m in year 22 of teaching, and I’ve always taught lower elementary school—first, second, or third grade—so I’ve stayed with the babies. I’ve been teaching Eureka Math since 2018. The district hired a new math coach position to help implement the program, so with the adoption of the curriculum I became a math coach. I have been instrumental in implementing the program across the district and working with the teachers in my building.

What did math instruction look like in the district before adopting Eureka Math?

We had a curriculum that teachers used; it just wasn’t as hands-on as Eureka Math. There was a lot more focus on procedural skills—more of a skill and drill approach—rather than a focus on problem-solving and critical thinking. The emphasis on math facts and algorithms worked for some students, but if a student couldn’t remember an algorithm, they were kind of lost. With the adoption of the common core state standards, we needed something that was more comprehensive and more in line with what we were being tested on.

"Before the shift to teaching conceptual understanding, math wasn’t my favorite thing to teach; it wasn’t fun. But when we got [Eureka Math], I began to think math was actually fun to teach."

–Candice Jackson

How has the shift to Eureka Math impacted you and the teachers you work with?

Before the shift to teaching conceptual understanding, math wasn’t my favorite thing to teach; it wasn’t fun. But when we got the new curriculum, I began to think math was actually fun to teach. Another shift that I’ve noticed with the adoption of Eureka Math and the changes we’ve needed to make out of necessity post-COVID is there’s a lot more personalization. Before, teachers sometimes had a one-size-fits-all approach. Now there’s more of a shift toward saying, “Everyone’s not at the same level, we have to differentiate. Some kids are here, some kids are there, and everybody needs something different.”

I think now most of us are coming to find that you can’t really move students’ proficiency without small group instruction and without differentiating instruction because students came back with so many different levels of understanding. Some students went to school virtually every day, and their parents participated, and they did their homework. And then some kids didn’t do any schooling. So you have to make accommodations for that.

How do you approach supporting teachers to differentiate their instruction effectively?

It's definitely tough. Coaching isn’t easy because sometimes teachers feel like it’s one more thing that they are being asked to do. But when it comes to something like small groups and differentiation, yes, it’s another thing to do, but it’s a necessity. When you do it, you reap the benefits and in the long run you’ll see it’s actually working.

It can be daunting for people to change the way they’ve always taught, but we have adapted the master schedule to allow for 45 minutes of small group instruction in addition to the core math curriculum, so the schedule allows for it district wide.

In your experience, where do you tend to see teachers struggle with Eureka Math and how do you support them?

Pacing is always a struggle for teachers­—getting through an entire lesson each day and not feeling like they have to master the entire lesson or reteach content the next day, putting them further behind. I try to help teachers understand that the curriculum does spiral to a certain extent and students don’t have to master a concept all at once. Pacing within a lesson can also be a challenge. I have to remind teachers that the meat and potatoes of the lesson is in the concept development. I provide a lot of tools and scaffolds and training for teachers on lesson structure and what it looks like to differentiate within that lesson.

How would you describe student engagement with Eureka Math?

I feel like students, at least in my experience, love whatever their teacher loves. If you make math seem like the most exciting thing on earth, your students will follow suit. Prior to teaching Eureka Math, the previous curriculum wasn’t as engaging. Now I think that it’s fun and it’s engaging, and the students definitely love it. Most of the grade 4 and grade 5 students in my school have come through my math class, and they all will say, “I didn’t like math before your class, and now I do.” So I think it’s an engaging curriculum, but it also comes down to the teacher and their comfort with it and how engaging they make it.

After using the curriculum for several years, have you seen growth in students’ math proficiency and preparedness?

Last year, in my building, students’ math scores on the MSTEP—our Michigan state test—were better than their ELA scores. I think it largely has to do with Eureka Math and heavily monitoring teachers’ implementation of the lesson structure along with the push for small groups. We also focused a lot on pacing through the curriculum because even if you have that strong curriculum, if teachers are still on Module 2 at the end of the year, that’s not going to be as impactful. So when we really focused on pacing and lesson structure, we saw great results at the end of the year­. I know in my building we outpaced the state.

Do you find that students have internalized the routines and models that you use in Eureka Math now that they are more familiar with it?

Absolutely, and they can refer back, too: They say things like, “Oh, we used to have an anchor chart above that problem.” So they do—they internalize and make connections. In our last staff meeting, the music teacher had said that they were talking about rhythm and a student had made a connection to a pattern they were learning in math. So they do carry things over.

How have you introduced Eureka Math to families and supported them in reinforcing instruction at home?

We do a lot of parent engagement events in my building. Monthly or bi-monthly we have parents actually come in, and the teachers do activities like make and takes where they teach parents what we are learning in math and give parents tools to take home so they can put the concepts into action right away. One activity we did was we showed parents our fluency activities and gave them white boards and markers to take home so that while they are cooking dinner or driving home, they can work on fluency with their child. We have given them sand timers to practice fluency at home; activities like that, and we try to personalize them. We will have one universal tool to send home but, for example, the activity that the kindergarten class is given along with the white board will be different than what the grade 5 class is given.

We also have something in the district called Eureka Math for Families, which is a professional development session that the district offers pretty much monthly. Parents can sign up by grade level to learn about what their child is studying in math for the upcoming month and get resources related to that. So that’s been very helpful, and then we send home the homework helper with students’ homework, and that’s pretty helpful as well.

What motivated you to become a Great Minds Professional Development (PD) Associate?

When we adopted the curriculum in 2018, I came on as one of the instructional coaches and I was also part of the team that was writing a guide for the new curriculum, so I was pretty familiar with everything. Then, we have something in Detroit called model schools, which are the schools that are doing a great job of implementing the curriculum and moving students forward. My building became a Eureka Math model school and as part of that I worked hand in hand with some of the liaisons from Great Minds who came to the district to provide monthly professional development.

Prior to COVID I thought about becoming a PD Associate and had applied in 2019, but then the pandemic hit and so I put the whole idea on hold. Then, once things settled back down, I reapplied because I really stand behind the curriculum. I was doing district-level Eureka Math professional development as a math coach for the district, for new teachers or teachers who just wanted monthly help with their implementation, so becoming a PD Associate just seemed like a logical next step after COVID when I reapplied.

How has being a PD Associate impacted you professionally?

It made me feel a lot more confident in what I was teaching and reinforced some of the things I was doing already, but it also gave me a different perspective on a lot of things as well. I teach Eureka Math, but I am a Eureka Math² PD Associate, so by seeing both programs I’ve actually been able to look at some of the changes that were made with Eureka Math²—some of the things that have been “powered up”—and apply some of those same principles in my own teaching. So I think becoming a PD Associate has made me a better Eureka Math teacher.

What advice would you give other educators implementing Eureka Math?

Trust the process. The curriculum is different from the way we learned, but it does work. I would say to let teachers guide the process and make the online resources your best friend.

Eureka Math is not a curriculum where you can wing it; you have to be prepared. It’s not that you have to read a script, but you have to internalize the curriculum and know what you’re teaching. If you’re teaching two-digit addition, but you don’t look at the teacher’s guide and learn the why of what you’re supposed to be teaching, you might skip concepts or terms that students are going to need next year. Maybe you never taught them the word “bundling” and now students need to use the word bundling, but they don’t know what it means. Or maybe you decided to omit the tape diagram because you didn’t know why you need to do that, but now students need to use it in grade 8 and were never taught that. So knowing everything does build, so you really need to internalize the lessons and trust that it does work.