Our Approach

Our priorities at McHugh align with the OCSB strategic commitments of Be Community, Be Well, and Be Innovative.

Be Community

We will provide students with relevant and authentic learning opportunities through engagement in service

Be Well

We will focus on staff wellness in order to model self-care and resilience for our students.

Be Innovative

We will introduce elements of design thinking to enable staff to develop mass personalized

Trauma Informed Pedagogy

At M.F. McHugh, our primary focus is to deliver pedagogy through a trauma-informed lens. Our educators maintain an understanding that our students come to us with variable backgrounds and that many have experienced trauma. As a trauma-informed school, the educators in the school community are prepared to recognize and respond to our students, who have been impacted by traumatic stress.

A Trauma-Informed Approach recognizes that trauma:

  • can be a single catastrophic event or a cumulative effect of adverse childhood experiences

  • causes toxic stress in childhood that creates constant low-level fear states and low to no threshold for conflict, novelty, frustration, etc

  • is the cause of biologically triggered stress behaviours over which the child has no control

  • is the reason affected students hear only half of the words spoken by teachers and lag socially, emotionally, behaviorally, academically behind their peers

Learning Methodologies

Three key learning methodologies that McHugh teachers employ are Social Emotional Learning, Project-Based Learning, and Deep Learning.