Trauma-Sensitive Schools and Special Education

Michael Gregory is Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS) and a Member of the Faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He teaches and practices law as part of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI), where he is Managing Attorney. TLPI is a partnership between HLS and Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a statewide non-profit child advocacy organization in Boston. TLPI’s mission is to ensure that children traumatized by exposure to violence and other childhood adversities succeed in school. At HLS, Gregory co-teaches TLPI’s Education Law Clinic, where law students both represent families of traumatized students in the special education system and learn and practice the skills of legislative lawyering to advance TLPI’s public policy agenda for trauma-sensitive schools. As a result of TLPI’s advocacy, Massachusetts enacted the Safe and Supportive Schools Framework statute in 2014, a first-of-its-kind law that creates a statewide infrastructure to support schools and districts to create safe and supportive whole-school learning environments that serve as a foundation for all students to succeed. Gregory is co-author of TLPI’s two landmark publications Helping Traumatized Children Learn, Volumes 1 and 2 and has also published in the area of special education law. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University.