Brieana Johnson

Senior Associate, Educator Engagement

Brieana Johnson (she/her) joins The Education Trust–West as a Senior Associate of Educator Engagement. A fierce advocate for educational justice, Brieana has 15 years of experience in K-12 teaching, teacher preparation, and nonprofit educational advocacy.

As an undergraduate student, Brieana began her journey as an educator with a student-initiated program that ignited Black and Brown students’ social and political consciousness while increasing their access to the University of California as a post-secondary possibility. Here, she began to see teaching as one of the most critical avenues toward the collective liberation of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and all marginalized peoples. After earning her M.Ed. from UCLA, Brieana taught for over a decade in Los Angeles and Oakland, where she was committed to cultivating meaningful learning experiences for her students that were transformative, humanizing, and liberatory. As she continued to grow in her practice, Brieana realized that excellent teaching and learning in the K-12 classroom cannot happen sustainably without the policy and infrastructure to ensure that teachers are adequately supported to fully serve those students furthest from opportunity. In a pivot away from the classroom, she served as a curriculum developer and researcher for Oakland Kids First, where she analyzed data and trends in Oakland Unified School District, engaging students, parents, and teachers to inform student organizing efforts that sought to advocate for equitable practices within the district.

Brieana is an Adjunct Instructor in the Teacher Education Department at the University of San Francisco and is the founder of Pedagogy of Resistance – an organization dedicated to providing teachers with access to high-quality, social justice-focused curriculum and training at no cost. She has a particular interest in teacher of color retention, as well as in the historical underserving of Black students in educational institutions across the U.S. Along with the recognition of the interconnectedness of all liberation struggles, Brieana believes that a true commitment to the education of all children looks like teachers, parents, administrators, policymakers, and community members leveraging their power to intentionally disrupt the status quo. When we, as educators, each in our given capacities, are working in a concerted effort toward this common mission, we are engaging in an act of resistance that is powerful enough to shake the current system to its core.