Regional Managing Clinical Director, SoCal
tstewart@aldergse.edu
Pronouns: he/him/his
Taquan obtained his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Delaware. From there, he worked with the United States Army in the area of Interior Ballistics. After a short time in Interior Ballistics (and two groundbreaking ballistics reports later), he turned his attention to teaching. He began teaching secondary-school science in the Christina School District (Delaware). He then brought his passion to Los Angeles, where he taught physics and other academic subjects. While teaching, Taquan earned his Master’s in Education and Administrative Policy Studies and his Doctorate in Educational Leadership. From 2007 through 2015, Dr. Stewart served as a secondary principal in South Los Angeles. Afterward, he spent a short time as executive director of a small charter-management organization, also in South Los Angeles. He currently serves as a SoCal Regional Managing Clinical Director for the Alder Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Stewart has also served as Faculty Advisor for the CalStateTEACH and Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency (LAUTR) programs, housed at California State University, Fresno, and California State University, Los Angeles, respectively. Dr. Stewart also coaches math and science teachers and budding administrators. In addition to this, he serves as Program Director for Project Youth California—a nonprofit organization designed to provide additional educational services to underserved youth of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. He previously sat on several boards and consistently mentors youth.
An educator for 30+ years, Dr. Stewart’s interests lay in the opportunity gap in science, urban education, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and the preschool to prison pipeline. In 2017, Dr. Stewart released Thoughts of a Ghetto Scatterbrain: The EP—a text using the intersection of science fiction and critical race to jump-start the minds of educators (teachers, administrators, parents, family, and community members) to dream of possibilities not always considered. As a poet (Penumbra and Nadir) and teacher educator, Dr. Stewart stresses a humanizing pedagogy.