Mr. Tom Cox’s approach to telling great stories in the classroom starts with a self-limiting 3×5 notecard. The challenge when telling any story from history is that all such stories run together, are infinitely entangled, and lack the defined clarity of exposition, crisis, climax, and denouement. Mr. Cox provides a practical framework and examples for “putting flesh on dry bones” in an effective, compelling way that students will remember.

This talk was delivered at the Forum Teaching Conference in the fall of 2024.

Teaching Essentials Workshop at The Heights School (June 16-20, 2025)

A Better Approach to History featuring Tom Cox and Bill Dardis

Keeping the Story in History by Mark Grannis 9/22

Seeing History: On Using Images in the History Classroom by Kyle Blackmer 2/22History the Way It Was by Bill Dardis

If we’ve decided against smart phones for our kids, can dumb phones come to the rescue? New options for families have hit the tech market, offering few or select features, and giving parents new things to consider when it comes to kids and phones in 2025. Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente offers a framework for thinking about smart phones, dumb phones, and feature phones in a culture still weighed down by anxiety and distraction.

4:04 Deciding when
5:17 Phones as tools
10:05 The dumb phone: what problem is it solving?
16:11 The feature phone: constant connection
17:30 Healthy friendship
22:03 An age of distraction, even offline
23:44 The need for silence
26:29 School policies
27:14 Family policies

School Phone Bans Alone Do Not Improve Grades or Wellbeing, The Guardian, February 5, 2025

Apple Just Reinvented Its Biggest App, The Atlantic, September 14, 2016

The Anxious Generation: The Great Rewiring of Childhood by Jonathan Haidt

Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation by Josef Pieper

Parents’ Conference: Passing the Faith On to the Next Generation at The Heights School (April 12, 2025) link coming soon

Technology in the Home: Perspective, Principles, and Practices by Michael Moynihan

Forming iGen: On the Forces that Shaped Them featuring Alvaro de Vicente

When Is Your Son Ready for a Smart Phone? featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Smart Phones: Why Wait When He’s “the Only One” featuring Joe Cardenas

On Freedom and Phones featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Reconsidering Electronics under the Tree featuring Alvaro de Vicente

“It is an atmosphere we breathe in, rather than an argument we consider.” Thus wrote T. S. Eliot about the very idea of happiness Americans have adopted for their own. When raising sons in modern America, we should understand what cultural air they—and we—are breathing. Is that “pursuit of happiness” keeping our hearts and minds restless?

In their book, Why We Are Restless, Dr. Benjamin Storey and his wife Dr. Jenna Silber Storey explore the inheritance of American-style happiness: where did it come from? Who has wrestled with it before? And how should we really engage with it? Ben Storey sits down with us to discuss this week on HeightsCast.

00:08:44 Montaigne’s recipe for happiness

00:15:16 “Immanent contentment”: now is enough

00:17:19 Pascal’s reach for God

00:20:11 Rousseau’s earthly transcendence

00:29:09 The American Dream

00:33:45 Democracy and restlessness

00:39:38 The highs and lows of infinite possibility

00:45:02 Advice for high school seniors

00:49:30 Advice for parents

Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment by Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey

ChatGPT Holds These Truths to Be Self-Evident by Mark Grannis

The Importance of History, Part I featuring Dr. Matthew Spalding