Category: Podcast

The vision of “man fully alive” involves a man motivated by faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these, St. Paul tells us, is love. Our guest today, Mr. Tom Steenson, is a long-time teacher of the Heights fifth grade and also the upper school class History of Western Thought. He brings his experience and broad readings to bear on the question: How can we impart lessons of authentic love to rambunctious twenty-first century boys in a way they’ll actually internalize? Tom’s practical ideas span younger and older students,…

In classrooms where the students can read for themselves, reading aloud often falls off the daily schedule. But it’s a ritual well worth keeping—for the sake of literacy, the moral imagination, classroom bonds, and so much more. Long-time Heights teacher Tom Steenson encourages the teachers tending that flame, or wanting to rekindle it, in their own classrooms. Chapters: Links: Featured Opportunities: Also on the Forum:

As we embark on a new school year, we are full of resolutions for the family routine. How will we order our week to support the highest goods? How will we fit it all in? Not to be overlooked while charting the course: our keeping of the Sabbath. Last April, author and teacher Daniel Fitzpatrick released his book Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. Daniel sits down with us at HeightsCast to discuss the book, which examines the cultural drift away from a sense…

“Picture yourself here.” “Become all you can be.” “This will be the best four years of your life.” The college pitch to high school seniors is alluring—though it doesn’t sketch a very clear life plan for a young person entering higher education. As Heights Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente points out, a successful time in college can be measured in growth: Are you physically, spiritually, and intellectually stronger by the end of these four years? In order to answer yes, students will need to embark upon college with a plan and…

Charlotte Mason’s simple framework for a teacher calls him a “guide, philosopher, and friend.” It’s a lovely image—but what does that practical application look like? At the Forum Teaching Vocation Conference last winter, Heights teacher Tom Cox unpacked each of these terms citing ancient wisdom and loads of modern classroom experience. Chapters: Links: Featured Opportunities: Also on the Forum:

In his address to the Forum’s Mentoring Workshop held in June, our Head of Lower School Colin Gleason helpfully reframed just what mentoring is—and what it can’t be.

In June, the Forum hosted a Mentoring Workshop for men across the country (and beyond) to consider the whys and hows of mentoring young boys into young men into men fully alive. It’s always best to start by defining terms. And so, the opening lecture for the workshop weekend featured Dr. Joseph Lanzilotti, theology scholar and upper school teacher at The Heights School, explicating the kind of Christian anthropology that precedes a mentoring relationship. In other words, how are we to understand what man is before we try to help…

Where to begin with the lofty, almost nebulous virtue of magnanimity—what St. Thomas Aquinas called “stretching forth of the soul to great things”? Of course we want to raise great-souled children, who even outstrip us in their vision of the good and their commitment to serving it. But words alone will fail to impart such a personal and complex mission. At last April’s Fatherhood Conference at The Heights, Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente tackled the challenge of how to teach magnanimity to our children. Following Fr. Carter Griffin’s keynote address, Mr….

The modern instinct with free time is to fill it. Whether in our own lives or in the lives of our children, we imagine that something productive or mindless is the antidote to an uncommitted hour. Middle school teachers Kyle Blackmer and Shane O’Neill encourage us to think differently. This week on HeightsCast, the duo shares practical reasons and methods for protecting our family’s free time, which helps to cultivate interests, relationships, and the wellbeing of the whole person. They speak especially to our role as parents, teachers, and coaches:…