“One of the best places to cultivate a Catholic worldview in the hearts and minds of young people … is in the backcountry,” writes Fr. John Nepil in his recent release, To Heights and unto Depths.

Fr. Nepil, who has led dozens of group treks through the mountains of Colorado and said Mass atop every fourteener in the state, joins us to talk about adventure and a young man’s theological education. The backcountry, he says, is rich in lessons of creation, dependence, suffering, and beauty—restoring our sense of being created and loved by a self-giving God.

5:18 What draws us to the mountains

9:04 “Nature” vs. “creation”

13:16 Fatherhood

16:00 Dependence

20:44 Cultivating a worldview

25:54 Guiding the conversation (or not)

28:13 Redemptive suffering

31:23 Starting with beauty

38:59 Physical vs. metaphysical limits

46:46 Men doing hard things together

48:29 The backstory of the book

50:39 A habit of reading

To Heights and unto Depths by Fr. John Nepil

Rethinking Mary in the New Testament by Edward “Ted” Sri

Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief by Joseph Ratzinger

Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

Why We Go: Seven Benefits of the Backcountry by Elias Naegele

The Way of Encounter by Joe Breslin

Why We Need Exposure to Nature by Eric Heil

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

How many times a day do I tell my son what to do next?

In this rebroadcast from 2015, our Head of Middle School Andrew Reed offers his ideas on cultivating an environment at home (and in the classroom) where boys can develop their own academic will. This entails not only greater freedom but also—just as necessary—a close and reliable family bond. Mr. Reed explains how this counterintuitive pair works together to teach a boy to choose the good for himself.

6:32 The will: a marker for success

9:02 Overmanaging: telling them what to do

10:54 Boys grow from experience and challenge

12:33 The indifferent boy

14:43 Prompt the will with a question

17:31 Create an environment of freedom

20:16 But keep a close family bond

22:33 Manage the influences

24:21 A parenting examination of conscience

27:10 Patience and optimism

29:00 The will, freedom, and good academic habits

Developing Academic Habits: A Guide for Parents by Andrew Reed

The Key to Success? Grit, a TED Talk by Angela Lee Duckworth, May 2013 (transcript here)

Academic Habits and a Student’s Developing Will by Andrew Reed

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

To help our seniors synthesize the many ideas, events, and texts they’ve surveyed across high school—and to help them better understand their own cultural moment—Heights teachers have developed a senior core class titled “History of Western Thought.” In this episode, Upper School Head Michael Moynihan and long-time teacher Austin Hatch discuss the course and its guide-text: Carl Trueman’s Strange New World (2022).

HOWT covers essential texts from Plato’s Republic to Pope Benedict XVI’s “Regensburg Address.”. Its goal is not only to prepare students for college work but to prepare them to meaningfully engage with the culture they will inherit, understanding its origins and its underlying assumptions.

00:02:31 History of Western Thought course
00:08:10 The “HOWT” syllabus
00:11:31 Strange New World, a primary source guide
00:14:13 Teens and the intellectual tradition
00:16:39 Seeing ideologies in motion
00:18:48 Pairing philosophical threads
00:27:26 Understanding our cultural moment
00:29:25 Pushing back on ‘authenticity’
00:33:31 How students respond to the course
00:35:09 Thinking about friendship
00:41:04 Big ideas in a short class
00:44:32 Reading Trueman alongside your son

Strange New World by Carl Trueman

“Canada Is Killing Itself” by Elaina Plott Calabro, The Atlantic, September 2025

Texts from the HOWT course:

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman

Republic by Plato

Phaedo by Plato

The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

De Officiis by Cicero

Moralia, vol. 1, featuring “How to Know a Flatterer from a Friend” by Plutarch

Confessions by Augustine

Summa theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas

Utopia by Thomas More

Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau

Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Idea of a University by St. John Henry Newman

Regensburg Address by Pope Benedict XVI

American Restlessness featuring Dr. Benjamin Storey

A Study for All Seasons: On the Western Tradition featuring Lionel Yaceczko

Is The Heights a Classical School? by Michael Moynihan

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

Properly understood, the imagination is not something you escape to; it’s something you draw upon every day to make decisions, understand events, and communicate.

This week on HeightsCast, Dr. Matthew Mehan explores the purposes of the imagination and the habits of wit and wisdom that help us insightfully process our world. We may think of the imagination at odds with reality. But, he says, cultivating the imagination actually makes us more capable, “wittier” thinkers about reality.

00:03:05 Defining the imagination
00:05:31 “Good mother wit”
00:08:25 How LLMs undermine the wit
00:11:05 Beyond the “moral imagination”
00:15:33 Imagination of the Founding Fathers
00:20:03 Aesop and governing your animal spirits
00:24:28 The mistakes of Naturalism
00:27:57 18th century ABCs
00:32:13 Role models for the civic imagination
00:40:38 Who chooses what goes in
00:43:26 Reality educates us
00:46:39 Recommendations for parents
00:52:24 Metaphor control: guarding your hope
01:02:33 Humor and joy

mythicalmammals.com, Matthew Mehan’s website

“Restoring America’s Founding Imagination” by Matthew Mehan

Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals by Matthew Mehan

The Handsome Little Cygnet by Matthew Mehan

The Plutarch Podcast by Tom Cox

Illustrated Aesop’s Fables by Aesop, with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton

Fifty Years on the Old Frontier by James Cook

Saints Series Podcast by The Merry Beggars

The Boy Stories Series by Tom Longano

Metaphor Control: A Modest Hope for Civilization by Matthew Mehan

Shaping Your Son’s Moral Imagination (article) by Alvaro de Vicente

Shaping Your Son’s Moral Imagination (lecture) featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Seeing History: On Using Images in the History Classroom by Kyle Blackmer

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

“… the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”

This week we feature a rebroadcast of a 2021 talk from our lower school head, Colin Gleason. Mr. Gleason addressed the topic of discipline using decades of experience in the Valley, converting the lessons he shares with his homeroom teachers into ideas for parents at home. Ultimately, his guidance is all about bringing a long-term vision and great love into our attitudes of discipline, willing the good for our boys with all earnest humility.

Whether you’re thinking the kitchen or the classroom, Mr. Gleason encourages us to foster a culture of respectful dominion.

3:54 The parenting crisis
7:04 Defining discipline
9:20 Boys, immaturity
14:44 Raising them to our level
16:30 Unanxious leadership
18:53 Things Valley teachers don’t say
20:47 Freedom via boundaries
24:10 Prudent corrections
27:47 Give options
28:47 Establish a culture
30:40 Rely on natural consequences
33:14 How lessons really sink in
35:07 To discipline should be to love
39:10 What Valley teachers do
41:33 You’re the expert for your child

Wimps and Barbarians by Terrence O. Moore

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

Self-Mastery and Interior Freedom by Alvaro de Vicente

Discipline in the Classroom: On the Art of Order featuring Colin Gleason

Why Boys Need to Be Given Freedom by Andrew Reed

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

In 2008, Tom Vander Woude died saving the life of his youngest son. But this radical self-gift was really the culmination of a quiet life of daily virtue with a heart of faith.

Chris Vander Woude, the fifth of Tom and Mary Ellen’s seven sons, now carries the story of his father’s life and death across the country, as well as sharing the process towards canonization that began this year with the assignment of a postulator in Rome. Chris joins us today to speak about fatherhood and the extraordinary man who exemplified it for him.

Chris invites you to reach out to him at 5thvwson@gmail.com or info@tvwguild.org.

00:04:50 The life of Tom Vander Woude
00:07:34 His sacrificial death
00:17:17 His character
00:23:23 Physical strength: one’s readiness for action
00:28:52 Faith: one’s trust and mission
00:39:18 Fatherhood and Down syndrome
00:50:52 Father of seven sons: tandem work
01:00:10 Tom’s discipline: priorities and good humor
01:04:39 Hosting and friend culture
01:07:44 Tom as a husband
01:13:03 Balancing family and community
01:17:22 Towards canonization
01:28:44 “Man fully alive”

Tom Vander Woude Guild, website

A Father’s Sacrifice, video interviews with the Vander Woude family

The Father: 30 Meditations to Draw You into the Heart of God by Fr. Mark-Mary Ames, featuring Tom Vander Woude’s story

Tragedy at Rattlesnake Falls: Opus Dei Mourns the Drowning of Three of Its Members, National Catholic Register, 3 July 2025

Forming Families, Forming Saints featuring Fr. Carter Griffin

To the Glory of God and the Memory of Emil Beer by Mark Grannis

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

They know we love them; but do our children sense that we like them? And how does that relate to their formation?

In the intense season of togetherness that is summer break, headmaster Alvaro de Vicente recommends four practices to help us live more in the present and enjoy our children—even when the anxieties of life come knocking.

00:02:17 Distinction between loving and liking
00:06:49 Four tools for cultivating “like”:
00:08:02 1. Express triple-gratitude
00:10:45 2. Spend unnecessary time
00:15:25 3. Find the humor
00:17:15 4. Pray for the grace
00:18:38 Why liking them matters
00:22:59 Living in the present: an antidote to anxiety
00:29:12 The “four tools” for teachers
00:35:42 Whether humor belongs in bad situations
00:41:14 Don’t take the bad too personally
00:46:03 Emotional stabilizers: marriage, friendship, prayer

I Believe in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on St. Thérèse de Lisieux by Fr. Jean C. J. D’Elbée

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War by Douglas Brunt

Reframing Our Desire to Be Liked featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Seeing Our Boys with Loving Eyes: Not Projects but Persons featuring Tom Royals

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

Months ago, Heights teacher Joe Lanzilotti took up a prodigious project: reviewing the body of popular literature on boys’ education.

Partway through his journey, Dr. Lanzilotti catches us up on the diversity of scientific, biological, psychological, and moral perspectives—and how they cohere into a bigger picture of boys and where their developmental needs differ from those of girls. Framing the evidence with papal guidance from the last century gives us a solid starting-point to consider the education of boys according to their nature.

00:04:09 The timeline of research on boys
00:08:26 Why attend to the sex difference
00:10:36 Definition of a man: fatherhood, sonship
00:15:06 Sex differences manifest early
00:21:05 The secular evidence supports natural law
00:28:51 The importance of role models
00:32:10 Single-sex education
00:34:55 Athletic trials
00:36:10 Male friendship
00:42:11 The collaboration of men and women
00:50:25 Parents, teachers: be not afraid
00:59:40 Educate boys according to their nature

The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine

Defending Boyhood by Anthony Esolen

No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men by Anthony Esolen

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers

The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together by Eleanor Maccoby

Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax

How to Raise a Boy by Michael Reichert, which Dr. Lanzilotti critiques

“Letter to the Bishops on the Collaboration of Men and Women” by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

“Letter to Women” by Pope John Paul II

Mulieris Dignitatem by Pope John Paul II

The Gurian Institute, training programs on boys’ and girls’ academic development

American Institute for Boys and Men, advocates for evidence-based policy solutions

What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about The Male Brain by Dr. Joseph Lanzilotti

Raising the Boys: Saving the Difference by Dr. Joseph Lazilotti

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

January Workshop at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026) link coming soon

May Workshop at The Heights School (May 6-8, 2026) link coming soon