Our Approach
Young people living in long-term poverty demonstrate challenges and difficulties related to thinking skills, language and literacy development, social-emotional development, and behavioral wellness. Districts and schools wanting to build internal capacity to improve student outcomes and close opportunity gaps at the classroom, grade, school and district levels can leverage content and strategies for students in poverty and other groups of learners experiencing persistent opportunity gaps; emphasizing inclusive practice, social-emotional learning, school and classroom culture, and family engagement.
Experience
Based on our work with the Leading Educational Access Project (LEAP), CES offers trained presenters and facilitators for this work, and content that will introduce the resources offered by LEAP, including understanding the impact of poverty on identification, placement and student outcomes; and access to resources, strategies and best practices for instruction. (Please note that while low-income student populations include those living in poverty, not all low-income students live at the poverty level.)
Services
LEAP Training of Trainers
DESE’s Leading Educational Access
Customized Professional Development
We offer a range of tailored professional development and team and individualized coaching on the impact of poverty. Some of the topics that can be adapted include:
- Approaches to poverty and racial diversity in schools; Impact of poverty on learning
- Basic physiology of memory, emotion, and learning; brain and learning principles
- Special Education: Disproportionality, identification & assessments, student support, placement, least-restrictive
- Special populations: Homeless and transient, English learners, traumatized learners
- The intersection of race, bias and poverty
- School and classroom culture that supports students living in poverty
Albert Johnson-Mussad
Dr. Johnson-Mussad serves as a staff consultant in leadership and instruction at the Collaborative for Educational Services. He travels nationally to facilitate professional development for school leaders, teachers and other licensed educators in instructional leadership; English learner education; world language and bilingual education; adolescent literacy education; improving outcomes for students in poverty; and social-emotional learning. He has been helping K-12 writers who are English learners, including EL’s with disabilities, to communicate personally compelling meaning for 30 years. He is the middle son of immigrants from Egypt, and a heritage speaker of English who also speaks Spanish and some Arabic.
Johnson-Mussad is a seasoned K-12 teacher and curriculum leader who has worked with central office and school-based administrators to increase achievement for both striving learners [or less ready learners] and gifted and talented [more ready] learners. In addition to professional development, he has provided individualized leadership and instructional coaching, curriculum development and strategic planning, and educational program evaluation. He is currently serving a 3-year term on DESE's Gifted and Talented Advisory Council.
Learn more about Leadership and Instruction Services here.
Dr. Johnson-Mussad’s publications include:
- Responsive Collaboration for IEP and 504 Teams, book. Co-authored 2022, Corwin.
- Instructional Techniques including Artists in Residence, Pair Shuffle, Who goes there? in New ways in Teaching English at the Secondary Level, Deborah Short. 1999, VA: TESOL
Among his recent conference presentations is Teaching Writers Learning English or Who Have IEPs, presented at the 2023 LitCon, the largest K-8 literacy education conference in North America, in Columbus, OH; and Culturally Responsive Practice in Using Federal Grant Resources at the Nov. 2022 DESE Federal Grant Programs conference. He presented on Teaching students in poverty at the 2019 ASCD Conference on Educational Leadership.
You can also hear Albert in two podcasts, This PhD Thinks, and Episode 20: In Search of Meaning.
Albert has taught K-12 English learners and high school Spanish. Albert served as an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and also in the role of elementary school principal.
"Albert creates a great community within his instruction where all levels of educators are welcomed and appreciated. As a result, every member of the course is engaged and contributes knowledge based on their experiences. This means that the participants come away with enormous "hands-on" strategies with ways to use them in different settings because of the discussions we have." --5th Grade ELA/SS Teacher
Position: Leadership and Instruction Continuous Improvement Specialist
Email: ajohnsonmussad@collaborative.org
Phone: 413.586.4900 x5945