HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive

Volume, pitch, pace, tone, inflection: the human voice is our primary teaching instrument. The spoken word has not just a  logos  and an  ethos  but an embodied and personal quality—which comes with enormous advantages. This week, twenty-five-year Heights veteran Tom Steenson shares a valuable reflection on the human voice and how we use it in the classroom. He includes many practical examples of...

When we join a school community, it should be to join forces with teachers, administrators, and other families in the "conspiracy for the good" of our children. In this multi-engine partnership, how do parents best play their role as the stewards of their child's whole-person formation? In this rebroadcast from 2022, Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente covers the idea of wise, willing, and informed partn...

Does a talented person have a duty to serve others? What do leading citizens really need to live well, freely, impactfully—even greatly? How do we, parents and educators, order the educational goods? "When I think of Thomas More's life, writings, and example, I think: here are the materials we need to answer those questions." So says Dr. Stephen Smith, professor at Hillsdale College and co-directo...

"Charity and clarity" are the lodestars when teaching middle school boys with various faith backgrounds—and who are developing faith dispositions of their own. Bill Dardis teaches middle school religion and eighth grade core at The Heights. In his sixteen years of experience, he's navigated many tricky waters with the boys, with the ultimate goal to bring them into a deeper and more engaged relati...

The crisis of meaning among young people gets a lot of press; but a quieter crisis of calling afflicts every generation today. Dr. Arthur Brooks says the causes are the same: not knowing what our life is really and ultimately for. In his talk at The Heights Forum Convivium 2025, Dr. Brooks shares the facts about calling—where neuroscience, psychology, and theology all agree, and how he (finally) f...

Kevin Twomey is a husband, father, and a principal consultant at Table Group, founded by Patrick Lencioni, which specializes in helping executive teams build a healthy operational work culture. Lencioni's book,  The Three Big Questions , brings that same expertise to bear on the modern frantic family: helping parents find their family identity, create intentional priorities, and live with more ord...

The first images of a "protector" that flash through our minds might be the warrior, the superhero, the movie star physically holding back evil from invading the world…. Our lower school head, Colin Gleason, casts a different vision: the benevolent king, the merciful brother, the knight at vigil in the sanctuary. Yes, our role as fathers is to protect—most often through a steady presence that comm...

To prepare for Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, the Eddas, and Dante—The Heights begins with Tolkien. In a talk from 2016, former middle school core teacher and current upper school classics teacher Tom Cox defends the place of J. R. R. Tolkien's  The Lord of the Rings  in the epic tradition. He then explains why Middle Earth is so uniquely suited to the middle school, using Samwise the Stouthearted as our...

From utero and into infancy, babies recognize their mother as being essentially one with them. So, being placed in their father's arms is in fact their first introduction to the "other," the outside world. The father will continue this crucial role as mediator and representative to the outside world throughout a boy's childhood. With decades of experience and dozens of personal anecdotes, Upper Sc...

Our mission is to assist parents in the intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual formation of their sons… At The Heights, we repeat these words often, including a paraphrase at the beginning of every HeightsCast episode. But what constitutes intellectual formation? What does educating the intellect look like? Co-founder of the Hillbilly Thomists and  Rector Magnificus  at the Pontifical Univer...

"Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt. 16:25). This week we're joined by Fr. Carter Griffin, rector of the St. John Paul II Seminary in the Archdiocese of Washington, and Alvaro de Vicente, headmaster of The Heights School, to examine "discernment." It's become a Catholic buzzword, applied (or sometimes, perhaps, misapplied) to a...

Please, thank you, after you … Do manners matter? Are they artifice or virtue? In this rebroadcast from 2019, lower school head Colin Gleason shares how manners can be the building blocks to a richer moral life—the habituation of virtue. He then offers practical advice for families and schools to help even young boys strengthen their "moral muscle" through manners that matter. Chapters: 1:34 Why s...

In our school communities, we talk a great deal about moral and intellectual formation. But physical development, too, has an essential place in the whole-person, long-term vision of what our sons and students can become. Heights Athletic Director Dan Lively reminds us that the goals of athletic training don't begin and end with high school sports. In fact, lifelong functional fitness is in servic...

One philosopher of our time claims that "today, the experience of beauty is impossible." Dr. Jason Baxter, director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College, begs to differ. Dr. Baxter joins us on HeightsCast to unpack his latest book,  Why Literature Still Matters , which looks at why such a claim might feel true in our digital age. Then, he talks us through why and how we shou...

The joy of "being known here" is not just for the students. When a faculty cultivates friendship, it benefits the entire school community. Tom Cox has been a middle and upper school Latin and Greek teacher at The Heights since 2009. Tom also hosts The Forum Faculty Podcast, now in its second year, which gives a slice of teacher breakroom culture: the kinds of conversations, rapport, and friendship...

What are parental rights? Are they a legal stance—or a philosophical one? In today's conversation, Dr. Melissa Moschella of the University of Notre Dame discusses the profound and practical implications of the parent-child relationship. She then explores how those conclusions operate in the American legal tradition, tracing from natural law to John Locke to historic court cases and the public disc...

There should be no contradiction in pursuing hard sciences, humanities, and moral virtue all in one day. For upper schoolers switching classrooms every hour, or for teachers siloed in a single subject, it can be easy to mistake "education" for a series of distinct academic categories. In this rebroadcast from 2015, Upper School Head Michael Moynihan gives us a better framework. He urges us to look...

"Be perfect" (Matt. 5:48) and "anxious for nothing" (Phil 4:6). This tall order from the New Testament may put modern parents into a cold sweat. Parental perfectionism and anxiety are surely on the rise, but in his annual Headmaster's Lecture at The Heights School, Alvaro de Vicente talks us down. He shows us the compatibility and wisdom of these two Biblical encouragements by refocusing on the  p...

The art of mentoring is not just for teachers and coaches, but also parents—who can never really be out of mentoring mode. In a recent Substack article, Alvaro de Vicente named five pitfalls for our attempts at mentoring young men. This week, he talks us through some of the takeaways, reminding us that mentoring is not a profound lecture but an ongoing conversation, and the goal is not to modify b...

In the broader society, mistrust increasingly defines the parent-teacher relationship. But it doesn't have to be this way. As a Heights parent and seventh grade core teacher, Kyle Blackmer shares a practical vision for sound parent-teacher relationships. It begins with understanding parents and teachers in their true, cooperative roles for a child's good. And it ends with developing real friendshi...

"One of the best places to cultivate a Catholic worldview in the hearts and minds of young people … is in the backcountry," writes Fr. John Nepil in his recent release,  To Heights and unto Depths . Fr. Nepil, who has led dozens of group treks through the mountains of Colorado and said Mass atop every fourteener in the state, joins us to talk about adventure and a young man's theological education...

How many times a day do I tell my son what to do next? In this rebroadcast from 2015, our Head of Middle School Andrew Reed offers his ideas on cultivating an environment at home (and in the classroom) where boys can develop their own academic will. This entails not only greater freedom but also—just as necessary—a close and reliable family bond. Mr. Reed explains how this counterintuitive pair wo...

To help our seniors synthesize the many ideas, events, and texts they've surveyed across high school—and to help them better understand their own cultural moment—Heights teachers have developed a senior core class titled "History of Western Thought." In this episode, Upper School Head Michael Moynihan and long-time teacher Austin Hatch discuss the course and its guide-text: Carl Trueman's Strange...

Properly understood, the imagination is not something you escape to ; it's something you draw upon every day to make decisions, understand events, and communicate. This week on HeightsCast, Dr. Matthew Mehan explores the purposes of the imagination and the habits of wit and wisdom that help us insightfully process our world. We may think of the imagination at odds with reality. But, he says, culti...

"… the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild." G. K. Chesterton   This week we feature a rebroadcast of a 2021 talk from our lower school head, Colin Gleason. Mr. Gleason addressed the topic of discipline using decades of experience in the Valley, converting the lessons he shares with his homeroom teach...