This summer, contributors of The Heights Forum, in preparation for The Art of Teaching conference this fall, travelled around the US and even around the world to deliver lectures and conferences highlighting aspects of professional development within the realm of teaching.
After a successful Teaching Vocation conference, The Heights School Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente flew all the way to Portugal to deliver four talks on the vocation of teaching. Building on points from Michael Moynihan’s “Teaching Sovereign Knowers” presentation, Alvaro stressed the importance for teachers themselves to be a conduit for their student’s academic success, so that through a sort of symbiotic relationship, students can go out and understand reality. In addition, he and Heights Middle School Head, Andy Reed, addressed Southridge, The Heights School’s brother school in the Philippines. Talk topics included freedom and formation in virtue.
Some members went to college campuses across the United States, speaking to students and professors alike about teaching and professional formation. Rich Moss delivered an address to an eager crowd at the Center for Constitutional Liberty at Benedictine College as a speaker for the National Summit on Civics in Catholic Education. In addition, Tom Cox and Bill Dardis visited Hillsdale College promoting their new History textbooks, Becoming Rome and Becoming Greece, but also to deliver lectures highlighting fundamental skills for teaching such as storytelling.
Middle School Head, Andy Reed, visited Our Lady of Lourdes in Denver, Colorado. During his visit he gave six total lectures for teacher formation. These talks not only emphasized the role of the teacher in the classroom, but also the necessity of surrounding the family of the student in the formation process. As teachers, there is an obligation to develop healthy patterns of learning thus inspiring contemplative life within the family.
Finally, the archdiocese of Boston invited multiple Heights faculty to participate in the St. Thomas Moore Teaching Fellowship. This fellowship aims to find faithful Catholic men who after a summer of development will be educators within the diocese. The Heights faculty oversaw the weeklong professional development workshop, training young men and women in specific aspects of teaching such as working with parents, mentoring, and the fostering of boy’s wonder inside the classroom. The principles taught during this workshop ring true to the Forum’s goal of ensuring the commitment that teachers have towards their students, bringing them out of ignorance and on their way to becoming young professionals in the world.
