Bree Picower

Professor of Education, Author

Dr. Bree Picower is an Associate Professor at Montclair State University in the College of Education and Human Development. She is the Co-Director of the Newark Teacher Project and the Critical Urban Education Speaker Series with Dr. Tanya Maloney at MSU.  She is busy at work on her next book, #CurriculumSoWhite with Beacon Press that examines recent examples of viral racist curriculum and what it means for teacher education’s responsibility to address teachers’ understandings of race.  

She is currently also working with co-editors Edwin Mayorga and Ujju Aggarwal on a 2nd edition of What’s Race Got To Do With It? How current school reform maintains racial and economic inequality.  Her co-edited book with Rita Kohli, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice, examined patterns of institutional racism by amplifying the voices of non-dominant teacher educators.  In her first book, Practice What You Teach: Social Justice Education in the Classroom and the Streets, she explored a developmental continuum toward teacher activism. 

Published widely in academic journals, her scholarship focuses on issues of race, racism and education.  Her students’ social justice curriculum is featured at UsingTheirWords.org.  Across all areas of work, Dr. Picower works to create spaces for educators to sharpen their political analysis and act for educational justice and was awarded the Scholar Activist of 2013 by the Critical Educators for Social Justice SIG of the American Educational Research Association.  She has taught in public elementary schools in Oakland, California and New York City.

TOPICS: Education, Policy, Activism