The Heights faculty strives to foster an environment that focuses on friendship and cheerfulness as essential to the education process. Friendship involves being concerned for the good of the other. It often begins through sharing similar interests. Friendships among students are necessary for emotional stability and genuine human development. The Heights faculty works to create an environment where these friendships can naturally develop. The faculty member also, in a manner consistent with the proper teacher-student relationship, seeks to be a friend to his students. This means striving to convey what is objectively necessary for full human development.

 

Teaching is not simply the passing on of information but of a vision of life rooted in a noble understanding of human nature. The teacher readily exposes the rationale behind the material to his students and seeks to help his students relate what they know already to further knowledge. The personal relationship between teacher and student is rooted in an understanding of the students as fundamentally free to embrace truth and take ownership of the great intellectual heritage that is our common inheritance. The teacher serves the dynamic process of passing on this great treasure to yet one more generation. The freedom necessary for this process must be respected and fostered by allowing appropriate expressions of personality in the classroom. A cheerful tone provides the optimum environment for such development. A Heights teacher will thus never be an authoritarian figure but will rather exercise his legitimate authority through the personal relationships he establishes through his teaching.