Teaching Religion with Multiple Faiths in the Room
“Charity and clarity” are the lodestars when teaching middle school boys with various faith backgrounds—and who are developing faith dispositions of their own.
Your Calling and How to Find It
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) found his. He goes on to say that helping young people to discover the true Christian purpose of life and then one’s personal…
Frantic Families: Three Questions for a More Intentional Life
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 order and purpose. Chapters: 4:01 Typical family operations 9:09 Frantic families in a frantic world 14:36 What makes your family unique? 21:57 Parent leadership 26:02 What is your family’s top priority…
The Father as Protector
Our role as fathers is to protect—less often as superheroes and more often as a steady presence. When we do our job well, they can live with confidence.
An Epic Education: Tolkien in the Middle School
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 guide to the heart of a middle school boy. Chapters: 2:46 Rethinking “the middle” 4:01 How LotR prepares boys for upper…
The Father as a Guide to the World
At the Fatherhood Conference, Michael Moynihan shared how a father’s parenting outlook now will shape his son’s vocational and professional readiness as an adult.
Reading into Reality: What Is Intellectual Formation?
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 University of St. Thomas in Rome, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, joins us for a deep-dive into the rich Catholic understanding of intellectus, habitus, ratio, and what it means to “form” these God-given…
Vocational Discernment in an Age of Infinite Options
“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 number of life situations. Here, Fr. Carter and Alvaro discuss the methods and limits of vocational discernment—and the moral courage of commitment. Chapters:…
On Manners: The “ABCs” of Virtue
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 start in the lower school 3:12 Manners: artifice or virtue? 5:34 Orienting them towards the needs of others 10:06 Manners that matter 13:31 Social manners for…
Formation for the Body: Lifelong Functional Fitness
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 service to every vocation. It ensures that we and our sons are capable of having a positive impact—on the world and in our families—for as many years…