What school did you go to?

Fort Zumwalt South in St. Peters. I grew up going to Pattonville but moved in middle school to the Fort Zumwalt school district.

Gallery • 5 Photos

Photo Courtesy of Kristin Judd

Math teacher Kristin Judd sits for her preschool photo. Judd was four years old at the time. “Grandma Judd was really into making dresses and she likely made this one,” Judd said.

What was your childhood home like?

I had a pretty good home life. My parents have been together my whole life and are very happy together. My dad [worked] for Boeing, so he could always provide. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She worked once we got into middle school and high school —  worked odd jobs at random places just to get out of the house and have things to do — but growing up, she was at home, taking care of us and coming up with activities [for us to do]. I was [also] very involved in sports and girl scouts and dance and our church.

What has changed, what hasn’t?

I [grew up] in the pre-computer era. I did not get a computer in my household until high school, and even then, to get on the internet, you’d have to wait for somebody to be off the phone. I didn’t get a cell phone until I was a sophomore in college. It’s very different now. Technology has changed a lot of how kids grow up. We didn’t really have a lot of hanging out inside. We just ran around the neighborhood and rode our bikes. We were always outside playing some kind of game, and we played with all ages. I feel like nowadays, it’s so easy for kids to hang out in the house  on their video games [or] phones. They communicate with their friends, but not face-to-face as much. When I wanted to hang out with my friends, I’d go to their door and talk to their parents or I’d call their house and ask to talk to them on the phone. We interacted intentionally with adults a lot more. I think kids are still kids for sure, and a lot of it is just how your parents run things and what kind of limits they put on and what their values are, but a lot of what we did had nothing to do with technology. We were definitely less supervised. [Also], I didn’t practice [sports] four times a week. My sports teams practiced once a week and played games on Saturdays, so we had a lot more free time on our hands.

When did you know you wanted to be a teacher and teach this subject? 

I always thought I wanted to be a teacher. When [my siblings and I] played school, I was always the teacher. I’m the oldest, so I always saw myself as [the] mom or teacher or the one in charge of everything, which anybody who knows me won’t be surprised by. In middle school, we made four year plans, and I thought I wanted to be a teacher. As far as math is concerned, I’ve always been a STEM person; I was never really into English or social studies. I wasn’t really that into science labs, so math made most sense.

Tell me a childhood story that always makes you smile. 

My mom grew up on a farm, so all of my childhood, my grandparents still farmed. They had crops [and]  cattle, but we no longer have that. A really positive memory for me  was going up to Iowa to the farm. I got the best of both worlds. I grew up in the suburbs where we had all kinds of activities and everything we needed was really close. Then, I would get to go and spend summers and holidays at the farm, where we would do things like ride tractors and move cattle and play with all kinds of different animals. I got to learn how to drive at 10, which was pretty cool. We used to go out and get an inner tube from a tractor tire and, [when it snowed], pull the inner tube behind the four wheeler and try to throw each other off the inner tube. We built giant bonfires [and] roasted marshmallows, hot dogs and all kinds of great [foods].

Gallery • 4 Photos

Photo Courtesy of Kristin Judd

Math teacher Kristin Judd attempts to smile for a picture. Judd was two years old at the time. “This was my typical picture face through most of my childhood. I never knew how to smile, so I always made a weird face in photos,” Judd said.

What things make you nostalgic when you see/hear/smell/ feel them?

Being out in the middle of nowhere when there’s a lot of crops. I love when the corn’s growing up and they’re all in rows. It makes me really nostalgic, being on a gravel road,  for the old farm life. We don’t get to do that anymore. My grandpa has passed, my grandma has moved into a retirement community, and no one in my family farms;we still own the land, but nobody lives out on the farm. 

My brother has a kid now and we’ve been going back through all of my old books [together]. I was really obsessed with Berenstain Bears, so reading those books to him has been really fun. All of the stuff coming out of the basement that my mom saved has been very nostalgic.