Category: HeightsCast

This week’s episode features Chris McKenna, founder and CEO of Protect Young Eyes (ProtectYoungEyes.com), who discusses the challenges and opportunities of raising sons in a digital age.

This week on HeightsCast, we welcome back Dr. R.J. Snell, the Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute and the editor-in-chief of Public Discourse. In the episode, Dr. Snell discusses his recently published book, Lost in the Chaos.

This week we feature a lecture offered by Head of Upper School, Michael Moynihan, at the most recent Teaching Vocation Conference. In his presentation, Michael encourages us as teachers to engage our students as free and rational agents, even when they don’t want to be engaged as such. Michael offers us some helpful insights into the principles that should guide our teaching, as we lead our students to becoming seekers of truth, rather than consumers of information produced by others.

Many of us assume that college will inevitably follow on high school’s heels, but why? Why go to college, and, once there, how do we make the most of the “college experience?” University of Dallas’ President, Dr. Jonathan Sanford, shares his thoughts on these questions and offers guidance as to how this experience should be different at a Catholic liberal arts university. Our approach to friendship, study, and reality is shaped by our university years. But so too are our university years shaped by our expectations heading into it. Higher…

In an age of external perfectionism, our children’s failure to achieve the standards we set for them can cause us anxiety—which itself then becomes an obstacle to the very thriving we hope for. This week on HeightsCast, Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente discusses how to avoid this pitfall. He suggests thinking of good parenting as analogous to tacking into the wind: in order to stay on course, you need to be comfortable taking a non-linear path. In parenting, this means being more focused on processes and less attached to outcomes. It…

This week on HeightsCast we share a lecture given by Tom Steenson at our recent Teaching Vocation Conference. In his talk, Tom discusses the ways that being a teacher helps one to be a better father, as well as the ways being a father helps one become a better teacher.

Dr. Scott Crider of the University of Dallas introduces us to Rhetoric, an art of persuasion that allows our future leaders to lead souls (and themselves) to the good.

Mr. Tom Steenson shares his thoughts on grades from a teacher’s perspective. After nearly 25 years in the classroom, Tom offers insights into the purpose of grades and how to grade students who perform well academically and students who don’t.

The book of Genesis tells us that God made man ut operaretur—that he may work. Far from a punishment for the Fall, work is an essential part of man’s original vocation. Indeed, it is precisely as a craftsman—a tektōn, in the Greek—who does his work well (cf. Mark 6:3) that Jesus was identified in the Gospels. Education, therefore, even a liberal arts education, ought to take into account this important aspect of man’s nature.  This week on HeightsCast, we welcome John Paul Lechner and Dr. Joseph Haggarty to discuss how…

“I’m a big believer in boredom…. All the [technology] stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too.” Thought-provoking words from the man whose company produces one of the most powerful tools for distracting ourselves from any feelings of boredom. Not only Steve Jobs, but seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, too, understood the dangers of perpetual entertainment, the inability to sit alone in a room by oneself.  Given the current cultural moment, a particular arena in which children—and, indeed, parents too—need to grow in self-mastery is that…