Now she figures she'll never leave.

"I'll probably be teaching here when I'm 75 years old," Davis says. "It's where I belong."

Hundreds of students and their parents couldn't agree more. In an age when few teachers stick around 30 years -- and fewer still pass up the chance to retire when they get there -- Davis is wrapping up her third decade by preparing for the fourth.

"She understands all children, but she especially understands 5-year-olds," says Sarah Balkcum, a Farmington Woods teacher for 17 years. "She has a way of getting kids to move away from the crying days of that first week into joining a little family."

It's not unusual for parents to think highly of a teacher, especially a kindergarten teacher who somehow makes everything turn out OK that first year of school.

But few kindergarten teachers anchor a school the way Davis does at Farmington Woods.

She arrived at the school in east Cary the year it opened in 1978. Having just finished her student teaching at Lacy Elementary School in Raleigh, she was disappointed in the assignment.

She was even less thrilled when she walked into her classroom -- a former computer lab, with no windows.

One of the last teachers to join the staff, she was given a split group of five second-graders and 18 third-graders. "I remember my mom and dad helping me put up butcher paper to make 'windows' to look out of," she says.

The space didn't last long. After a few parents complained, the class was moved to the music room. But that upset the music teacher, so the group was moved again to the library -- and then again to another room.

"It was unbelievable," Davis recalls. "My dad told me if I could make that first year, I could make any year."

She did survive, landing her second year in kindergarten, where she started to piece together a teaching style that looks virtually seamless today.

Moose -- and more

With 20 children gathered on the carpet at her feet, Davis started telling the children about moose one recent afternoon.

To the 5-year-olds, it was a story. But it was just as clearly a lesson on habitat, geography and sorting fact from fiction. The fiction she read came from the popular children's book "If You Give a Moose a Muffin."

Then came a math lesson by asking each child to "vote" for his or her favorite muffin flavor, which the children graphed by pasting little muffin cutouts onto a big sheet of paper.

When two students returned from an assignment outside the classroom, she immediately drew them into the math lesson.

"Joshua, Milena: What is your favorite flavor muffin?" she asked. Happy to be included, the pair quickly offered their opinions.

The "little mooslings," as Davis called her class, eagerly counted the muffins all over again before writing a few sentences about moose and coloring a moose picture.

Some children no doubt told their parents they learned about a moose that day. They clearly learned more.

Like many teachers, Davis comes from a family of educators. Her grandfather taught math at Broughton. Her mother still teaches piano at age 83. A sister is an assistant principal at Penny Road Elementary School in Raleigh.

The music teacher at Farmington Woods, Ann LeGarde, started her career by replacing Davis' aunt.

"I can hear them singing songs today that are the same songs my aunt used to play," Davis says.

That level of consistency coupled with a stellar attendance record -- she rarely misses work -- builds a foundation that former students still remember.

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