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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 offers participants a framework for applying Gregory’s Seven Laws to writing program design — not just to individual lessons. It provides four tests for designing writing prompts that require genuine thought rather than mere completion, a method for assigning meaningful writing that does not produce a grading avalanche, and a model for building a writing program that spans grades and disciplines, anchored in shared language and aligned expectations across the school.
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.