Our Mission
The Heights Forum is a department of The Heights School. We assist parents, school leaders, and teachers in their own efforts to educate boys into men fully alive. Through in-person and digital resources we share our experience in forming the hearts and minds of boys, and invite you to join the conversation.
Professional Development on the Road
Andrew Reed, Middle School Head and Leaders Initiative Director, recently led a day-long workshop for teachers at Summit Academy, focusing on the vocation and mission of teachers. In his first session, Andy outlined three levels of a teacher’s vocation: forming the mind in the context of a single class, forming the person in the context of a school, and forming the whole person in the context of a family. He encouraged teachers to widen the scope of how they see their work, to understand that they are called to not...
Forming Families, Forming Saints
Pope St. John Paul II outlined the four pillars of formation for seminarians back in 1992 with his apostolic exhortation Pastores dabo vobis. For years, Fr. Carter Griffin has used this framework to walk with seminarians through a program of human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral formation at St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, DC. With his recent book, Forming Families, Forming Saints, Fr. Griffin brings that rich framework into the context of parenting. In this episode, he provides parents with an overview of the four pillars of formation, and...
Forming Men of Faith
By Alvaro de Vicente
Parents want their sons to be happy. For Catholic parents, an indispensable part of helping their boys live happy lives is forming them into men of faith. Despite parents’ noble aspirations for their sons, however, the vast majority of children raised in a Catholic family unfortunately do not remain Catholic after leaving the home. According to a 2023 study commissioned by the Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life and conducted by CARA, a Georgetown University affiliated research center, in 2018 only 14% of those who were raised Catholic in the...
Textbooks: Tool or Crutch?
In this episode of the Forum Faculty Podcast, Tom invites Heights teachers Austin Hatch, Mark Grannis, and Shane O’Neil to discuss the use of textbooks in their classes. They explore whether textbooks are vital tools or limiting agents, sharing personal experiences and strategies for balancing textbooks with engaging and personalized teaching methods. The conversation covers a range of subjects including literature, history, logic, and math, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of using textbooks, the importance of teacher-student interactions, and the flexibility required in dynamic teaching environments. 00:00 Introduction and Guest...