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.

"A lot of memories are really just flashes here and there -- like that big Jolly Green Giant cutout in the room," said David Williams, a 25-year-old who was in kindergarten two decades ago.

"So I can't say for sure that it was Miss Davis who taught me my colors or anything like that. But what I do remember is that she made me feel safe and she made me believe school was a good place to be."

Williams just finished a master's degree at Westminster Theological Seminary and hopes to earn a doctorate. A few years ago, his nephew was assigned to Davis' classroom.

Stories inside stories

It still feels odd to Davis when she finds she is teaching the nieces, nephews, sons and daughters of former students. She taught the husband of a teacher who is now on the staff.

"How old does that make me feel?" she asks. At age 52 in a space she loves, not that old, really.

But it does leave her with stories inside stories that lead to more stories she can tell. A huge N.C. State fan, she was tickled to have former basketball coach Jim Valvano help in the classroom when his child was assigned to her.

She still laughs when Emily Guerin, a former student who is now 19, recalls the day she told her family that "Miss Davis taught us about syllables. The color 'ba-lue' has two of them" -- a dead giveaway to Davis' Carolina Piedmont drawl.

But it isn't just an all-loving embrace of little ones that allows Davis to recall fun times. By her own description, she is a drill sergeant during the first month of school.

If anyone strays from the right side of the hallway when walking as a group, he tries it again. Students in the red learning center are taught to place finished assignments in the red basket. If they forget, they go back and do it over.

By the end of the year, she scarcely has to ask whether a child knows he has broken a rule. If she puts her hand on a child's shoulder and asks whether that is how he should act, the child's facial expression gives away the answer.

Children haven't changed that much in 30 years, Davis says. Most are rambunctious and at least want to be well-behaved. Every now and then she spots a child early who is headed for trouble. The same can be said of "helicopter parents" who hover over their children.

The bigger changes are the ones happening to children. In the early 1980s, only a few kindergartners went to preschool before kindergarten. Now it's the other way around.

She used to have a parent volunteer in class every day. Now it's down to three parents who come every other week.

She still insists that children learn by playing. Cutting, drawing, building and working together are classroom staples. But today she knows exactly what skill they must gain from each exercise if they are going to meet the rigors of testing in a few years.

"Kindergarten now is like first grade when you look at the academics," she says.

About 12 years ago, Davis moved from kindergarten to second grade when Fran Venezia was named principal.

She did fine there, but something wasn't quite right. The students' growth curves seemed off to her. She missed the opportunity to set a foundation. The mooslings had grown.

Two years later, Venezia moved Davis back to kindergarten.

"It was obvious," Venezia said. "Kindergarten is her place."

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