Christian Teacher of the Year: Dr. Nancy Cook brings the Bible to life with ancient artifacts in a modern classroom 

The clean, crisp pages of an English Bible might obscure for high school students the real and fascinating world of people, places and things presented in Scripture’s true stories, letters and poetry. 

But there is a door to that once living world we now consider ancient. It just takes a teacher like Rejoice Christian School’s Dr. Nancy Cook to open it and let students inside. 

“My innovative practice has always been, and continues to be, to immerse my students in a culture that is thousands of years removed and 7,000 miles away,” the Owasso, Oklahoma, teacher tells The Lion. 

“The best way I know to do this is to let them participate with as many senses as possible – tasting the foods of the Middle East, speaking, singing and hearing the Hebrew language, slathering Dead Sea mud on their hands and holding an oil lamp, seeing the ancient sites, studying the maps and learning the locations, and celebrating the holidays that Jesus celebrated with His community.” 

Indeed, Cook, who has led many archeological tours in Israel, isn’t afraid to get her or her students’ hands dirty to help them understand the history and truth of Scripture, whether through classes on archaeology, anthropology or the New Testament book of Acts, which recounts the earliest history of the church. 

“I have been blessed to have collected ancient artifacts from Israel with the sole purpose of bringing this material culture to my students, so that they can have not only a visual but also a tangible learning experience,” she said. “My students get to touch and feel ancient coins used in the first century. They get to hold Roman glass and weapons from the times of the Babylonians and Alexander the Great. 

“Adding to their cultural experience, my students have the opportunity to hear from a variety of guest lecturers and scholars who visit my class in-person and via Zoom from Israel.” 

Cook’s effective approach is one reason she’s been named one of 12 Christian Teachers of the Year by the Herzog Foundation, which publishes The Lion. 

Deeper faith that makes a difference 

Once students begin understanding the Bible in Cook’s classes, their hunger for knowledge grows – and so does their faith. 

“My students tell me that my passion for what I teach inspires them to want to know more – to dig deeper for themselves into their faith,” Cook said, adding that students often first enter her class struggling with enthusiasm about reading Scripture. “They felt overwhelmed, but my class helped them by increasing their knowledge. Now they are excited about reading the Bible for themselves because they believe they can understand what it says and apply it to their lives. The more they read and study the Bible, the more their biblical worldview develops.” 

Studying the history and archaeology of the Middle East has created opportunities for students to put that worldview to work when grappling with world events, including the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel and its aftermath. 

“I had students in 2023, 2024, when these things were happening in Israel. I had a really good friend who is a Ph.D. archeologist in Israel. He’s Israeli Jewish, and he would sing with my class. One time we were on a Zoom call, and the sirens went off, and he literally had to get up and barricade himself in his safe room. 

“But then I had students in anthropology class, just as a result of everything we’re talking about and understanding the history and the culture and our Jewish roots and Christianity… And they came to class and they were (asking), ‘How do we talk to people our age who are just filled with rage?

“And so I could see how personally they were really taking this to heart. I remember when Iran was bombing Israel just about a year ago: I had left, and I heard about it on the radio, and I turned around and I went back to the school, and the seniors were at lunch, and I just popped into the lunchroom and I said, ‘Do you guys want to pray? Israel is being attacked right now.’ So all the senior class came out, and we joined hands and we prayed in the hallway.

“So I’ve had so many students over the years come back and just touch base with me, two, three, five, seven, 10 years later, and talk about the things that they’ve learned.”

A growing passion

It’s a remarkable track record for a teacher who first taught science – with academic degrees in agricultural economics, science and adolescent psychology, before additional degrees in counseling, including a Doctor of Ministry.

After an extended season away from teaching to do ministry, Cook returned to Rejoice to teach science when the principal asked, “If you could teach anything in the world, what would you teach?” 

“I said, ‘If I could teach anything in the world, I would teach biblical archaeology,’” Cook recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, why don’t we do it?’ So I spent the summer developing the curriculum.”

And the rest is history – or archaeology and anthropology to be more precise. 

But the path to biblical studies began even earlier, during childhood, when Cook remembers her intrigue with her mother’s beautifully illustrated King James Bible.

“My earliest memories, I really had this strong desire to understand what it was like at the time that the Bible was written,” she said. “And so as I fast forward through my life, that calling and that desire just grew, and so I really was just drawn to learning more about it, … learning more about the Bible.” 

And like all the best teachers, Cook’s passion is highly contagious, infecting seniors year after year with the same desire to know and understand God’s Word. And that’s certainly cause to rejoice.

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 are invited to attend a special professional development and recognition event in Washington, D.C.