Susan Cole, a teacher turned lawyer, gravitated toward a special type of client: children in trouble.
While working for a Boston nonprofit in the early 1990s, she saw a surge of expulsions of students from schools enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for behavior seen as threatening the safety of classmates or teachers. Among her clients was a 15-year-old boy, neglected by his mother and abused by his father, who was banished from school and a regular in juvenile court. She took him to a psychologist, who offered a surprising diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder.
The experience spurred Ms. Cole to look for ways to help schools embrace traumatized students—afflicted by such things as neglect or domestic violence—rather than kicking them out. That would be more humane, she thought, and cheaper for society in the long run than endless cycles of prosecution and incarceration.
Cole is a COE alumna.