HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive

Our headmaster, Alvaro de Vicente, offers a lecture on how to build a solid relationship of trust with your son. This relationship matters because it is the context within which you will form your boy's character.

Brad Soderberg, Assistant Coach for the UVA Men's Basketball Team, shares his thoughts on coaching and parenting character through athletics at a very high level.

Hear our Headmaster, Alvaro de Vicente, explain the mission and vision of The Heights. For 50 years, we have partnered with parents to form "men fully alive" by tending to the intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual well-being of every boy.

Smart phones present unprecedented challenges to parents. Consequently, we are encouraged to "wait until 8th." Head of Heights Mentoring, Joe Cardenas, wonders whether we should hang in there just a little longer. Have Smart Phones Destroyed a Generation, Jean Twenge (TheAtlantic.com) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ "Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones." Teens find circumventing Apple's parental controls is child's play, Reed Albergotti (Washington Post) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/15/teens-find-circumventing-apples-parental-controls-is-childs-play/ "These are not rocket science, backdoor, dark Web sort of hacks," said Chris McKenna, founder of the Internet safety group Protect Young Eyes. "It blows me away that Apple hasn't thought through the fact that a persistent middle school boy or girl can bang around and find them."

In this episode, Mr. Kyle Blackmer explores the virtue of order and how we, as parents partnering with teachers, can share it with our middle school boys. It is entirely possible for a young man of 13 to appreciate an ordered life and an ordered mind. It is also possible to teach a young man lacking order to embrace a new virtue. Listen in to learn how.

Are manners stodgy vestiges of a bygone aristocratic age? At The Heights, we'd offer a resounding "no." Manners matter, and as parents and teachers, these "rules of civility" offer a great opportunity for teaching our boys virtue. Listen in to hear more.

Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente offers advice to individuals interested in stepping to the front of the classroom. What sort of temperament best suits a teacher? What ought one to study in order to prepare? Listen in to learn more about what Heights Headmasters, from Bob Jackson to Alvaro de Vicente, have looked for in their faculty for 50 years.

Dr. Matt Mehan explores the relationship between practical and speculative wisdom in the liberal arts education. He explains that "an education in the liberal arts must give pride of place to practical wisdom, to navigating the realm of becoming, while resisting the temptation to focus on speculative or contemplative Wisdom, that final rest and joy of the heavenly realm of being."

Lower School Head, Colin Gleason, offers a Heights Lecture on integrity. He shares how honesty requires far more than merely telling the truth; our boys must learn to live the truth.

In today's episode of HeightsCast, Heights Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente discusses hiring, the attributes of the teachers he hires, and where he finds them. A faculty is a School's most valuable resource. It is mission-essential to get hiring right; our headmaster discusses his approach here.