The Heights provides students with incredible opportunities for personal growth outside of the classroom. Whether it be through a class camping trip or retreat, rock climbing on the Potomac, debate at an Ivy League tournament, attendance at daily Mass, or traversing the Appalachian Trail during a mountaineering expedition, Heights students are offered many and diverse ways to grow as men and to explore the world around them. Education as an adventure is not just a metaphor at The Heights; it is a reality.
A Campus Fully Alive!
Clubs and extracurriculars are only a small part of what we consider to be “student life” at our School. Activities are icing on the cake, but the freedom and friendship of our School are essential.
Boys are expected to be boys at The Heights. That is what they are, and demanding anything different would be unfair. Visitors to our campus will notice a place bustling with activity, with an irreplicable positive energy generated by young people experiencing life to the fullest. A glance from the right vantage point yields a group of boys playing chess, while their classmates ride a skateboard, while their older friends play a game of tackle-football, while a teacher demonstrates proper tree climbing technique, while high schoolers, fresh out of a demanding class on the Aeneid, let off steam with their daily acorn war, perhaps reenacting with natural artillery what the ancient Greeks undertook with spears. Boys enjoy being on our campus because we let them be themselves–its a source of relief to them. “FINALLY!”, you can almost hear them say, “I knew it wasn’t strange to touch the snow!”
From a teacher’s perspective, this freedom (along with the insights into personality and temperament that it provides) are essential to our profession: we can’t work with parents to shape a boy into the man he is supposed to be until we see who he really is–both his strengths and his weaknesses. And your son will not be himself until he is given the freedom to do so.
Casual and Friendly
Visitors to The Heights comment time and again on the friendliness of our School: despite the formal attire, it is a casual, unassuming, and genuinely friendly place to be educated. This is due, in part, to the freedom we give the boys–what better way to make or deepen a new friendship than to be brothers in arms, defending a newly constructed fort; or to hike 20 miles in a day across the coast of Northern Spain? Our campus’ friendliness is also due, however, to the tone and accessibility of our faculty. They are everywhere on campus, and they are constantly accessible to your sons. Every faculty member at The Heights sees as his primary responsibility the mentoring of young men outside the classroom. Consequently, students form close friendships with their teachers, and these friendships allow us, as a faculty, to create and preserve a positive culture within each class.
Student Life by the Numbers:
- 4 Clans
- 7 Festival Clan Days (Field days, Football Tournament, Day of the Tower)
- Nearly 30 Clubs
- 10 Annual Camping Trips
- 15 Annual Crescite Trips and Seminars
- 5 Annual Concerts
- 3 Drama Productions
- Countless opportunities