Since 1999, Rebecca has worked with in-service and pre-service teachers K–16 on how to respond to the grammar needs of African American students. Based upon  hundreds and hundreds of actual student essays (grades 3–14), Wheeler has built a repertoire of approaches, strategies, tools and graphic organizers showing how to step off the correction treadmill and finally succeed in building a bridge to Standard English in the diverse classroom. With publication of her book, Code-switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classrooms, co-authored with urban educator, Rachel Swords, Wheeler now makes her tools and strategies available in one resource. Her work has been supported by Title 1 funds, by the Virginia Department of Education, and by the U. S. Department of Education GEAR-UP program (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), and by individual schools’ professional development funds.  Wheeler and Swords are hard at work on a follow-up workbook of minute-by-minute lesson plans to supplement their Code-switching book. Wheeler is glad to share these with teachers.

Education

• 1989 Ph.D., The University of Chicago (linguistics)
• 1980 MS, Georgetown University (linguistics) 
• 1974 BA, The University of Virginia (French)