DAVISON — This week’s Michigan Lottery Excellence in Education winner was LaTasha Thomas, an educator at Davison Elementary-Middle School, who received a $2,000 check from the Michigan Lottery.
A former math student and tutoring student who nominated Thomas said she helped shape their academic future.
“I nominated my former math teacher and math tutor, LaTasha Thomas, for the Excellence in Education Award,” the nominator said. “She is the reason that I have gotten into the amount of colleges that I have gotten into. She’s more than an excellent teacher. Tasha is probably, dare I say, the standard.”
Thomas said she became an educator because she found it rewarding to help students build skills that extend beyond the classroom.
“It’s rewarding to help the students learn the skills that they need to not just be successful in the classroom, but throughout the rest of their lives,” Thomas said. “So that’s the most rewarding part for me.”
Thomas said she valued hearing from former students about the impact of her teaching.
“When they come back and you see what they’ve become, and they’ll tell you what you really did it really helped me in high school, teaching me middle school math,” Thomas said. “You made it so easy and I’m like, I did something to help them.”
Excellence in Education Awards are sponsored by the Michigan Lottery, which the broadcast said has provided more than $29 billion to public education since 1972.