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
