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Mark Wheeler is a rhetoric English teacher at Hickory Christian Academy in Hickory, North Carolina, where he has taught a variety of classes since 2006. He has also coached the mock trial team for several years. He and his wife, Leah, have six children who attend Hickory Christian Academy. They are members at West Hickory Baptist Church, where Mark is a deacon and teaches the youth Sunday School class. Mark has graduate degrees from Pensacola Christian College, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and St. John’s College. The leftward progression of the successive institutions does not generally reflect his thinking.
This session shows how Gregory’s principles provide a clear, practical framework for teaching writing as a tool for learning in every subject. Drawing on classroom experience across rhetoric grade levels and subjects, the presentation will demonstrate how shaping writing assignments in light of Gregory’s laws in Bible, history, literature, and the sciences can help ensure the effectiveness of those assignments. Teachers will see how shared language, clear expectations, and regular, modest writing practices help students attend more carefully to what they read, remember more accurately, and express understanding with greater precision. The presentation will emphasize short, meaningful writing tasks that strengthen thinking without drastically increasing the grading load. This session is designed for teachers who want writing to support learning rather than become an isolated or burdensome task. Participants will leave with concrete examples of writing practices rooted in Gregory’s time-tested insights. These practices will strengthen attention, reinforce order, and help students perceive and communicate meaning more clearly.
Writing is presented not as self-expression or content delivery, but as a means of forming the intellect—shaping habits of clarity, order, and careful attention Christian understanding of education as paideia: the formation of the whole person. A clear framework for teaching writing across multiple disciplines using writing-to-learn tasks that strengthen understanding without increasing grading load, shared language and expectations that create greater coherence across departments, increased confidence for non-English teachers in assigning and assessing writing, writing instruction aligned with Christian formation and love of truth and neighbour.
Mark Wheeler is a rhetoric English teacher at Hickory Christian Academy in Hickory, North Carolina, where he has taught a variety of classes since 2006. He has also coached the mock trial team for several years. He and his wife, Leah, have six children who attend Hickory Christian Academy. They are members at West Hickory Baptist Church, where Mark is a deacon and teaches the youth Sunday School class. Mark has graduate degrees from Pensacola Christian College, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and St. John’s College. The leftward progression of the successive institutions does not generally reflect his thinking.