gretta wheeler

Aquinas Fourth-Grade Teacher Brings Learning to Life

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 11/9/06)

Fourth-graders at St. Thomas Aquinas Regional School in Woodbridge use English class to write letters to the troops. In social studies they paint pumpkins with continents and oceans to use as decorations for the fall dinner. In math they bring in Washington Post ads and find the best bargains and sale prices. Leading this group of 9- and 10-year-olds is their teacher, Gretta Wheeler, now in her 23rd year of instructing fourth-graders at the school.
“I love this age of children because they are so enthusiastic about learning and I love to see them grow in confidence and independence,” Wheeler said, sitting at her desk in the front of the second-floor classroom. “I think fourth-graders can do anything at all if it’s presented to them on the right level and in the right way.”
Letters and numbers fill the walls; globes, computers and cubby holes for jackets line the sides of the room. Last week the class learned how to diagram sentences: identifying subjects, predicates and verb combinations. Hands shot up from workbooks, each student eager to share his or her answers with “Mrs. Wheeler.”
Wheeler, a member of Holy Spirit Parish in Burke, received her undergraduate degree in history and education from Fontbonne University in St. Louis in 1969, and her master’s degree in special education and remedial reading from Loyola University in New Orleans in 1972. She and her husband, Courtney, a former Department of Defense employee, spent several years in Germany before settling in Northern Virginia. Wheeler began teaching at Aquinas in 1984.
“I’ve spent all of my life in Catholic education from kindergarten up through grad school,” Wheeler said. “That’s why I love teaching in Catholic schools.”
Wheeler can’t seem to settle on a favorite subject — “It seems like whatever I’m teaching at the time is my favorite thing,” she said — but she has a soft spot for working with religion. On Dec. 13, her class will celebrate the feast day of St. Lucy, and the children will dress up, and make and serve bread to the administration. In March, on St. Joseph’s feast day, the class will collect diapers and baby formula for the Our Lady of Angels St. Vincent de Paul Society, located next to their school.
In a couple of weeks, Wheeler will ask the parents to help their children “make an investment of themselves” and do service projects in exchange for canned foods for the needy. It’s through this type of interactive work that Wheeler said she reminds her students that it’s not the grades they get in school that determine their place in heaven, but how they live their daily lives. And with Mrs. Wheeler as their example, the fourth-graders are well on their way.