Powerlifting teacher Murray overcomes emergency [Video]

All around Theresea Daniel’s classroom at Viewmont Elementary School are reminders to “be strong.”

She’s pasted the phrase in block letters to a bulletin board. A life-size cardboard cutout of the athletic, big sister Luisa from the Disney film “Encanto” towers in the back of the class. And Wonder Woman bobbleheads and posters fill the wall behind her desk.

Among it all, too, is Daniel’s own hefty stack of shiny medals won at powerlifting competitions.

She is a record-setter in the sport, and it shapes how she teaches her 6th graders.

Daniel first turned to lifting just a few years ago, after a harrowing battle with bacterial meningitis nearly took her life. Next to the medals she’s earned in deadlift and bench press, Daniel has hung the cane she used to learn to walk again, after the infection sent her world spinning.

Her classroom is about resilience and grit and …