Christian Teacher of the Year: Luisa Beesley brings literature to life with creative, faith-filled lessons 

Luisa Beesley loves to surprise her students.

The world literature teacher at Cambridge Christian School in Tampa, Florida, regularly springs creative activities on her students to bring the stories they are studying to life.

Sometimes she pretends to be asleep, requires a password to enter class or gives riddles students must solve – or die.

“This fall when I teach Oedipus, I am going to have students get into teams and try to solve the riddles that Oedipus had to solve to save his city, and if they don’t solve them, they ‘die’ and become part of the ‘chorus,’ so they can learn how a Greek chorus works,” Beesley said. “For something like this, we turn off the lights, lightning flashes when they die and I have a talking AI sphinx that I made – I could tell you the pressure of having to solve riddles, and what it feels like when you don’t, or I could allow you to experience it.”

When teaching Lord of the Flies, she “sat in the corner and played dead while my class had free rein of an entire room for 45 minutes,” mimicking aspects of the book.

“I’ve done everything from throwing torn-up strips of essays on the floor for kids to put back together, to bringing in head-to-toe costumes for The Crucible, to creating an actual speakeasy with passwords that I passed around to the kids who always show up late when I taught The Great Gatsby,” she said, describing her innovative teaching style.

She is guided by a philosophy.

“My class is about having students connect with stories as part of their own human experience, versus me just giving them information.”

It’s this unbound creativity that makes Beesley one of 12 instructors across the country named 2026 Christian Teacher of the Year by the Herzog Foundation, publisher of Heartlander News.

‘God enjoys surprising his people’

Now in her seventh year of teaching and fourth at Cambridge Christian, the descendant of Cuban immigrants said her goal is to help students who don’t normally like English gain an appreciation for it – and to impact them spiritually.

“When students walk into my class every day, I want them to wonder if something magical is going to happen. And biblically speaking, I think the Bible is full of surprises,” said Beesley, who holds a graduate certificate in adult education and training and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. “God is a God that enjoys surprising his people, with miraculous things, but also funny things – like a talking donkey.”

The former marketing trainer and fundraiser took a break from the corporate world following the birth of her son, then decided she wanted to train people in something she loved: English.

The path to Christian education 

Beesley started in a public high school, then switched to a secular private school but was disturbed by what she saw. The experience, which she called “very hippie-dippie,” influenced her to choose Christian education for herself and her two children, who are 4 and 7.

“It was a small private school that was not a Christian school. All the classrooms were tree houses. It was actually probably the most pagan thing I’ve ever seen,” she told Heartlander News. “While I was there, I think I felt very convicted that my children should go to a Christian school, because they were actively teaching Buddhism to these little five-year-olds, and I just thought that’s not great. So when it came time for my children to become school-aged, I started looking more into schools that they could attend that I feel comfortable with what they were being taught.”

Teaching at a Christian school allows her to “really use all of everything God teaches you, instead of having to totally compartmentalize certain things because you can’t talk about it.”

In college, she joined Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru), which taught her how to lead a small group, share her testimony and disciple others. She now uses those skills with high schoolers.

“I disciple students. I have two students that I sit down with twice a week and actually walk through a discipleship curriculum with, and I also attend and lead small groups, and I also participate in devotionals at school, and we are encouraged to integrate the Bible into our curriculum as much as we can, and then also encouraged to preach the gospel and pray with our students.

“There’s now no longer any line between the secular and the spiritual in my life, it’s very integrated, and it’s cool to be able to minister to students in a way that’s open. There’s no need to hide it, and then I’m supported by my school community too, which is really cool.”

The Gospel changes lives

Cambridge is evangelistic, meaning students don’t have to be Christian to attend. Beesley has taught students who are Muslims or even atheists. And she’s always ready to make an impact.

Once, a 17-year-old student got into a motorcycle accident and nearly died. He was left paralyzed, but shortly before the crash, Beesley had a dream that she needed to share the Gospel with him. So she obeyed.

“The day before he got into that accident, we had had a very sincere gospel conversation about where he thought he was going to go if he died, and what does that mean for him. And the next day he got into an accident that nearly took his life, and from there we spawned a relationship where we talked about God quite a lot when he returned to school.

“My staff, my administration was very supportive of me talking to him and having those conversations with him, and I can’t imagine what would have happened in a public school where I couldn’t have had that conversation with him.

“It was life-changing for both him and for me,” she added. “I think it was really humbling for me, in terms of obedience, that if God might be prompting us to do something we should obey.”

Going ‘crazy’ for Jesus

Beesley said her principal is “extremely supportive” of her ideas, so that makes her “go nuts, more nuts and even more nuts because I’m like, ‘Well, he’s not gonna mind if I build a speakeasy.’”

Last year, when they did The Great Gatsby, Beesley built a speakeasy around her door, complete with a slot to open and close and passwords she gave to students she knew would come in late.

“I gave it specifically to them, because everybody else would show up to the door and just stand there and be like, ‘How do we get in?’ And I would open the door and be like, ‘Password?’ and they would all just stare at me, and I would close the door, until the last kid showed up with his password.

When the late student showed up with the password, she quickly urged her students to “Get in, get in.”

“My principal had noticed that there was a group of 10 kids just standing outside my door, so he walked up like, ‘Oh, what’s going on?’ and I just yelled ‘Authorities!’ and I shoved them all in and closed the door.”

Beesley said there are two things Christian schools offer that public schools can’t: Jesus and teachers who consistently think “out-of-the-box.” A reputation for committed – and courageous – teachers can help attract students.

“The bottom line is, the more children in my seats, the more they’re going to hear about God, but they may not come firstly for that. If they come firstly for something crazy that I do, that’s fine. They’re going to get Jesus thrown in.”

For parents considering Christian school, she acknowledged the cost but said following God’s lead is the most important thing. Beesley graduated from public school, but her children have a different path.

“The reason my children also attend a Christian school is because I know that first of all, God is first in the lives of every staff member and that my administration actively looks for ways to integrate the Bible into every single aspect of everything at my school, and that at the very least, my children will have a foundation that is rooted in God and the way He created the world to function and people that understand how the world functions based on what God says.

“It starts with it’s a top-down view, like God first and then everything else.”

The Christian Teacher of the Year honor is part of the Herzog Foundation’s Excellence in Christian Education award series. Each of the 12 winners was invited to attend a special professional development and recognition event.