Linda Davis teaches eighth-grade math at Shasta Elementary School in the Manteca Unified School District.
"I give students lots and lots of opportunity to be successful, and then we celebrate the success ..."
"If you have a 100-percent quiz, it goes up on the wall, and we send home positive postcards when you're doing well."
"Just try to make the goal. You can do it. And if not, then I can see you before school, after school, at lunch ..."
"They know that I'm going to check on them. I think that builds this: It's important. We're going to do it ..."
"They end up with good math skills. But it's because they get to a point where they've got some confidence."
"(Linda Davis) is the stuff that Marvel Comics superheroes are made of, in the form of an exceedingly humble, dedicated and successful instructor who has taken students on an academic journey, many of whom thought was not possible until they met her," Shasta Elementary School Principal Audrey Parker said when nominating Davis.
Parker added that Davis, "has the uncanny ability to teach confidence and self-respect to students who naively presumed they were only going to learn about algebra in their year spent with her."