Taton Becomes Director of Mathematics for School District of Philadelphia

Joshua Taton brings the MTC spirit to the School District of Philadelphia

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Joshua Taton is the new Director of Mathematics for the School District of Philadelphia. A PhD candidate in math education at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of the Philadelphia Area MTC (PAMTC), Taton started working at the School District in June. Since then, he helped kick off the District’s new summer professional development initiative, inviting 1,000 teachers and their principals from 75 schools across Philadelphia. In the fall, Taton helped roll out new instructional resources aligned with the state standards — a “dizzying” amount of work, he cheerfully said in an interview with the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development. Taton said he had always wanted to support the District “in some way, shape, or form,” and credited his work with the PAMTC for providing him with contacts and credibility in the math education community to do so. The PAMTC is a great model for how universities can partner with school districts in regard to math education, Taton said: “I think of [the PAMTC] as a team… We engage with scholars and researchers, regularly, who are great thought partners for helping us move forward, but who also learn from our wonderful teachers and what they do. Among many other things, they develop an appreciation of the complexity and scale of the District, and we learn about the direction of education research. We are always looking to develop such projective working relationships with committed partners.”

This article originally appeared in the Winter/Spring 2017 MTCircular.