Early Childhood and Elementary Education Professor Bree Picower

A scholar whose work examines race, racism, and education, Bree Picower began her career directing after school programs in Ann Arbor, MI and San Francisco, CA.  She became as a school coach and technology coordinator with the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools. She then entered the classroom and taught second and third grade at Prescott Elementary School in Oakland, California as well as sixth grade and first grade in the NYC Department of Education. She later turned her attention to teaching at the post-secondary level and joined New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education as a doctoral student and adjunct faculty member in 2002.

bree picower
Dr. Bree Picower

After earning her PhD in teaching and learning from the school, Dr. Picower spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor preparing pre-service teachers focused on social justice and antiracism.  At this time, she also organized with the New York Collective of Radical Educators and the National Teacher Activist Groups to create spaces to bring together educators committed to social justice.

Bree Picower became an assistant professor at Montclair State University in 2010, received tenure in 2015, and was promoted to full professor in 2021. Today, she teaches multiple courses and serves as co-director of its Newark Teacher Project and Urban Teacher Residency. She also co-coordinates a speaker series called the Critical Urban Education Speaker Series that brings nationally renowned scholars to the Montclair community. 

Complementing more than two decades of teaching experience, Dr. Picower is a member of the American Educational Research Association. In 2013, she received the Scholar Activist Award from the Critical Educators for Social Justice special interest group within the organization. She has published widely in peer-reviewed academic journals and is the author of Practice What you Teach, co-editor of What’s Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality and Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice. Her latest book, Reading, Writing and Racism, was released in January 2021.

Photo Credit: JR Arimboanga