Sydney Johnson, M. S.

Director of the Peninsula School at The Faison Center

Early in her career, Sydney Johnson was introduced to a student with autism while working as a teaching assistant in a special education program, sparking a lifelong interest in working with special needs children and their families. Her rich and rewarding career path has taken her from early days of teaching third grade in an inner-city Washington D.C. school and acting as Director of Correspondence for Laura Bush to her current role as Director for Administration for the Peninsula School. Sydney originally joined The Faison School as a Program Supervisor, then left to help start the Peninsula School for Autism as Executive Director. She rejoined the Faison organization when the two programs merged in May 2018. She’s driven by the incredibly rewarding experience of helping to change lives through the application of evidence based technologies in a school based setting among a richly supportive community of highly qualified professionals.

Sydney received a bachelors in early childhood education from James Madison University and a masters of science in special education from The Johns Hopkins University. Concurrent with graduate school, she worked in three programs at the Kennedy Krieger Institute: The Center for Autism and Related Disorder as a behavioral technician, the Pediatric Feeding Unit as the Director of the Developmental Playroom and the Neurobehavioral Unit as an Education Coordinator. She is currently enrolled in a post-masters program in applied behavior analysis at Florida Institute of Technology to become a board certified behavior analyst.