Category: HeightsCast

Last weekend, The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story on American young men and the crisis of masculinity. It featured hard stories of the “aimless and isolated”—but could ultimately offer no solutions. This week on HeightsCast, we’re pleased to welcome Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway. Bishop Varden has authored several books exploring human personhood, including topics of masculinity and femininity. He helps us get the lay of the land both culturally and spiritually in this so-called moment of crisis. His Excellency then shares the vision of masculinity that…

It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out. So writes the fictional devil Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’s epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters. But where devils may wish to keep the good out, Heights headmaster Alvaro de Vicente highlights the ways we as parents can keep the good in. By aligning our family culture with the good voices we hope our sons will hear—and leaving space to allow the…

Part of the Teaching Sovereign Knowers Collection In recent years, a number of HeightsCast guests have touched on the same resounding theme: the modern creep of curiositas and acedia, both considered classical vices. But where there are two vices, Aristotle encourages us to look for a virtue at the Golden Mean. Mr. Michael Moynihan, head of The Heights upper school, finds it in studiousness. Adding to his collection of work on Teaching Sovereign Knowers, this episode unpacks Michael’s essay “Intellectual Virtue and Personal Sovereignty,” available on the Heights Forum. In…

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…