Welcome to our website and to The Heights! I hope you find this site to be a helpful source of information about our School, our philosophy, and boys’ education generally.
As you will learn while perusing this site, The Heights offers a traditional liberal arts education that focuses on the development of intellectual virtues, helping to foster the practice of concentrated study and a sincere interest in the abundant goodness of the world. Its curriculum is strongly grounded in the classic texts of western civilization. Its students achieve impressive results on recognized standards of excellence such as Advanced Placement and SAT exams, and many of its graduates go on to the best colleges in the nation.
At The Heights, parents are helped to form their sons into the type of men they would want their daughters to marry—men who will be great fathers. The faculty encourage the boys to be true Christian gentlemen, striving to do the ordinary things of life extraordinarily well for the love of God and in the service of others. All student programs take place in the context of a personal approach to education where cheerfulness goes hand-in-hand with hard work and a striving to conquer oneself.
There are several sections of this website to which I would like to draw your attention:
The Faculty Publications provide you an opportunity to better understand the School through the writings of those who have the greatest impact on the students. I trust you will find these reflections enriching and thought-provoking.
The Parents section is imbued with our philosophy of recognizing parents as the primary educators. Simply stated, to see parents in the role of primary educator means that the parents are responsible for the education of their sons. We contribute to the academic, physical, moral, and spiritual growth of the young men under our care, and thus we lend a helping hand to their parents, but we do not usurp the parents’ responsibility. The Parents page explains some of the ways the School helps parents in the education of their sons by means of parent programs: lecture series, coffee with the headmaster, discussion groups, and other such activities.
The Curriculum section of our site contains details about the Lower, Middle, and Upper School Curricula. Our program has been carefully developed over the course of many decades, and though we welcome the challenges and opportunities presented by modernity, our academic focus remains the cultivation in our students of a life of the mind; of the capacity for reasoned thought, and an appreciation for reality.
The Mentorship section describes in detail our mentoring program—a unique and central component of The Heights education. We strive continually to develop the intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual well-being of each individual boy, and mentoring is a principal means by which we accomplish this. The mentorship section describes not only the mechanics of the program but also the goals and types of discussions which our students have with their mentors. Both prospective and current families will find this a helpful guide to different topics to discuss with young men, both at School and, more importantly, at home.
Our website is intended to further our mission by facilitating communication. We do not want it to prevent or take the place of direct verbal, face-to-face communication between people and students, faculty and parents, parents and school, even people outside our community and the School. There is no substitution for visiting the School itself in person, and we hope to see you on campus soon.
Thank you for visiting our website.
Alvaro de Vicente, Headmaster