The first images of a "protector" that flash through our minds might be the warrior, the superhero, the movie star physically holding back evil from invading the world…. Our lower school head, Colin Gleason, casts a different vision: the benevolent king, the merciful brother, the knight at vigil in the sanctuary.

Yes, our role as fathers is to protect—most often through a steady presence that communicates security to our children. When we do our job well, they can live with confidence. In his talk from the Fatherhood Conference last fall, Colin identified five battlegrounds for establishing this kind of security, most of which are in our own homes.

The Father as a Guide to the World featuring Michael Moynihan

The Father as Presence featuring Andrew Reed

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (May 6-8, 2026)

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.

2:46 Rethinking "the middle"

4:01 How LotR prepares boys for upper school

7:57 How LotR meets boys in middle school

12:47 Contrasted with other epics

14:41 Samwise as a middle school model

24:47 Tolkien's lessons for teachers and parents

26:07 Samwise the Stouthearted: earning his epic epithet

31:18 "Bear one another's burdens, fulfill the law of Christ"

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Iliad by Homer, prose translation by A. S. Kline

Plutarch Podcast by Tom Cox

Becoming Greece, textbook by Bill Dardis and Tom Cox

Becoming Rome, textbook by Bill Dardis and Tom Cox

The Forum Faculty Podcast hosted by Tom Cox

The Hope of Hobbits and the Despair of Denethor by Tom Cox

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)

From utero and into infancy, babies recognize their mother as being essentially one with them. So, being placed in their father's arms is in fact their first introduction to the "other," the outside world. The father will continue this crucial role as mediator and representative to the outside world throughout a boy's childhood.

With decades of experience and dozens of personal anecdotes, Upper School Head Michael Moynihan addressed the 2025 Fatherhood Conference to share how a father's parenting outlook now will shape his son's vocational and professional readiness to enter the outside world as an adult.

00:05:47 Mr. Moynihan's background 00:08:17 Fathers represent the outside world 00:12:21 Model God's loving fatherhood 00:17:02 Awaken the child's own agency 00:24:52 Partner with your wife to build this home culture

The Talk and Beyond: Raising Children in a Confused Culture by Michael Moynihan

Decisive Parenting: Forming Authentic Freedom in Your Children by Michael Moynihan

The Father and His Family: A Guidebook for Aspiring, New, and Experienced Fathers by Michael Moynihan

You're the Man for the Job: The Vocation of Fatherhood featuring Alvaro de Vicente

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 faculties.

1:35 Intellectus: to read into reality

7:41 Modern challenges to intellectus

13:35 Habitus: a stable disposition towards excellence

17:59 Modern challenges to habitus

21:22 Ratio vs. intellectus

27:07 Intuitive "sight" as a function of intellect

32:27 Developing clear "sight" in the young

34:35 Forming the heart alongside intellect

38:47 Whether the heart and intellect fully integrate

44:01 Beauty reveals the life of the mind to itself

The Hillbilly Thomists, co-founded by Fr. Thomas Joseph White

Contemplation and the Cross: A Catholic Introduction to the Spiritual Life by Fr. Thomas Joseph White

Wisdom in the Face of Modernity by Fr. Thomas Joseph White

Full catalog of books by Fr. Thomas Joseph White

The Regensburg Address by Pope Benedict XVI

Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education by Stratford Caldecott

Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation by Josef Pieper

Why Beauty Matters: The Postmodern Pressure on Our Interior Life featuring Dr. Jason Baxter

Teaching Sovereign Knowers, essay series by Michael Moynihan

"Fact or Opinion?": Roots of Relativism in an Ethical Dilemma by Michael Moynihan

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (May 6-8, 2026)

"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.

3:45 Christian discernment

6:09 Misuses of the word "discernment"

9:39 Whether we can wrongly discern vocation

14:46 Choice paralysis

20:25 Submit to the process

25:48 Dating and marriage

29:55 Mentors and spiritual directors

33:21 Principles for discerning well

39:38 "Throw your life away"?!

46:17 The need for prayer

52:36 Crisis of vocations or crisis of faith?

59:59 Church choice and church-hopping

"The Catholic Church Has a Manpower Problem", 22 September 2025, WSJ

2026 Men's Discernment Retreat for the Archdiocese of Washington

2026 Men's Discernment Retreat for the Diocese of Arlington

Forming Families, Forming Saints by Fr. Carter Griffin

Forming Fathers: Seminary Wisdom for Every Priest by Fr. Carter Griffin

Cross-Examined: Catholic Responses to the World's Questions by Fr. Carter Griffin

Why Celibacy? Reclaiming the Fatherhood of the Priest by Fr. Carter Griffin

You're the Man for the Job: The Vocation of Fatherhood featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Fostering Vocations in a Digital Age featuring Fr. Carter Griffin

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (May 6-8, 2026)

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.

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 small children

17:57 Intergenerational social experiences

21:30 Coaching in advance

27:23 Our example

Manners: The Art of Happiness by Robert Greving

Manners Make (More Than) the Man, review of A Gentleman in Moscow by Robert Greving

Mustard Seed Communities, donations for Jamaica hurricane relief

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)

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 as we're on this earth.

3:22 A long-term vision for your son's physical development

10:41 The goal: robust longevity

14:34 Health: more than avoiding disease

21:05 Mark Baker on functional fitness

24:14 Fitness increases one's potential for self-gift

25:58 Role of the school

31:51 Role of the family

40:09 Parents can play too

45:39 The thrill of middle school gains

47:32 Embrace your inner gym bro

52:01 The reluctant athlete

GuruAnaerobic, Mark Baker eBooks

Athlete or Academic: What's the Real Priority in Schools? on the Forum Faculty Podcast

Movement as Foundation of Fitness featuring Dan Lively

Character Formation in Elite Athletics featuring college coach Brad Soderberg

Mustard Seed Communities, donations for Jamaica hurricane relief

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)

One philosopher of our time claims that "today, the experience of beauty is impossible."

Dr. Jason Baxter, director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College, begs to differ. Dr. Baxter joins us on HeightsCast to unpack his latest book, Why Literature Still Matters, which looks at why such a claim might feel true in our digital age. Then, he talks us through why and how we should reclaim our experiences of beauty for the health of our soul.

00:03:34 The experience of beauty 00:08:44 Byung-Chul Han: the possibility of beauty today 00:15:41 Marc Auge: still living in the Enlightenment experiment 00:20:46 The soul is not a machine 00:24:57 Our task as parents, educators 00:35:05 Likes and emojis: the simplification of our interior life 00:49:23 A near-death experience in Sardinia 00:56:24 Beauty and mental health 00:57:40 Franny and Zooey: interiority matters 01:03:41 Recommended reading

Why Literature Still Matters by Jason Baxter

Help! Where do I go from here? Part I: Poetry by Jason Baxter

Beauty Matters, Substack for Jason Baxter

jasonmbaxter.com featuring articles and lectures

Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College

Saving Beauty by Byung-Chul Han

Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity by Marc Auge

The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

A Letter to Our Daughter by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan

"A Prayer for My Daughter" by W. B. Yeats

"Burnt Norton" from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

"A Hill" by Anthony Hecht

"Advice to a Prophet" by Richard Wilbur

The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Breathing Narnian Air: Loving Modernity as a Medievalist featuring Dr. Jason Baxter

Receiving Beauty: A Liberal Arts Education featuring Dr. George Harne

Order and Surprise: On Beauty and the Western Tradition featuring Dr. Lionel Yaceczko

Mustard Seed Communities

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)

The joy of "being known here" is not just for the students. When a faculty cultivates friendship, it benefits the entire school community.

Tom Cox has been a middle and upper school Latin and Greek teacher at The Heights since 2009. Tom also hosts The Forum Faculty Podcast, now in its second year, which gives a slice of teacher breakroom culture: the kinds of conversations, rapport, and friendship that are born of our shared work and life as teachers. Tom joins us today to talk about how important faculty friendship is to making a school into a community, and what schools can do to support the planned and unplanned interactions that feed friendship.

1:53 Tom Cox's history at The Heights

6:35 School as a community of friends

10:15 Using school trips for faculty bonding

14:58 Regional schools: community or society

17:01 Creating community over large distances

26:53 Building up faculty friendship

36:04 Friendship requires shared life, work

38:57 Facilitating that shared life

47:09 Planned and unplanned interactions

50:49 Real communities pass on a culture

57:26 The fruit of staying in one place

"A Faculty of Friends" from Gregory the Great Academy in Elmhurst Township, Pennsylvania

Plutarch Podcast by Tom Cox

The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

Man and the State by Jacques Maritain

The World-Ending Fire Collection by Wendell Berry

True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness by John Cuddeback

"Charles" by Shirley Jackson

"The Work of Local Culture" in What Are People For? by Wendell Berry

The Forum Faculty Podcast hosted by Tom Cox

Friendship and the 21st-Century Boy featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Friendship for Fathers featuring John Cuddeback

On Friendship after Senior Year featuring David Maxham

Fathers' Conference at The Heights School (November 1, 2025)

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)

What are parental rights? Are they a legal stance—or a philosophical one?

In today's conversation, Dr. Melissa Moschella of the University of Notre Dame discusses the profound and practical implications of the parent-child relationship. She then explores how those conclusions operate in the American legal tradition, tracing from natural law to John Locke to historic court cases and the public discourse today.

3:46 True rights imply true duties

10:04 Natural law: knowable through reason

15:00 The rights and duties of parents

22:32 Role of the state in the American tradition

28:44 Twentieth-century shift, John Rawls

37:29 Whether schools can be value-neutral

43:34 Parental rights in American courts

46:47 Beyond religious liberty

55:00 School choice as parental choice

1:00:57 Public discourse: how to talk to friends, family, neighbors

1:05:30 Her book on natural law

Melissa Moschella, Ph.D., McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame

To Whom Do Children Belong? Parental Rights, Civic Education, and Children's Autonomy by Melissa Moschella

Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law: Principles for Human Flourishing by Melissa Moschella

Democratic Education by Amy Guttman (argued against by Dr. Moschella)

Brief of Amica Curiae in Support of Petitioners by Melissa Moschella

"Nonreligious Parents Have Rights Too," WSJ op-ed by Melissa Moschella

The Mortara Case: Parental Authority and Thomas Aquinas featuring Dr. Matthew Tapie and Dr. Lionel Yaceczko

Parents as Primary Educators by Michael Moynihan

Fathers' Conference at The Heights School (November 1, 2025)

The Art of Teaching Boys Conference at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)