Not too many things predate Judy Davidson at St. Theresa School in Little Rock. When you’ve spent the entirety of your 42 years in teaching at a school founded just 54 years ago, there’s not much you haven’t seen firsthand.
“When I first started teaching kindergarten, we just taught the letters and the sounds,” she said. “Now, I’m teaching reading and addition and subtraction. It’s almost like kindergarten has come down to being first grade.
“When I first started teaching, of course, there was paddling. We don’t paddle anymore, so I guess that’s a big change, but I didn’t like paddling anyway, so that was good.”
Davidson, 63, has watched the times, faces and trends change in ways both satisfying and challenging. She has seen four additions to the school and the construction of the parish center. She even predates the current church building by a few months. Through it all, she finds a refreshing constant in her students.
“I just enjoy them,” she said of the kindergarteners, the class with which she has spent the bulk of her career. “They’re sweet; they just want to learn so much and when they learn something new they get really excited about it.”
Davidson grew up in St. Edward Parish in Little Rock. The second of four kids, she was volunteering at Catholic day cares during the summer by the time she was in middle school. She also candy-striped at UAMS’ nursery while a student at Mount St. Mary Academy; babysitting was her pocket money.
She graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 1971 and welcomed her first class of St. Theresa sixth-graders that fall. One student from those first three years was Joyce Gangluff (now Joyce Hood), a student who would later figure into a landmark in Davidson’s career.
Three years in, Davidson switched to second grade and for the next decade led legions of young Catholics through their academic steps as well as the sacraments of reconciliation and first Communion. St. Theresa was not only a workplace but her new home parish along with her husband Leonard, now a retired state auditor, and their two children, both of whom spent second grade in mom’s classroom.
Davidson helped get the school’s kindergarten program started and found teaching the littlest of the school’s students agreed with her, so after one year teaching pre-K she settled in as kindergarten teacher and never looked back. Among her students during this period was Joyce Hood’s daughter, Kristy (now Kristy Dunn), notable as one of many second-generation students to pass through Davidson’s classroom.
“This was the first year out of the house and away from my mother,” Dunn said. “I was very nervous. One of my clearest memories was when (Davidson) dismissed us for recess, I wasn’t sure it was OK to go out and play and I followed her all the way to the school office.”
Davidson would relinquish her kindergarten classroom only once, a three-year stint as interim principal. She said it was a matter of doing what needed to be done, not something to which she had previously — nor since — aspired.
“It was all right being an administrator, but my love was the kids,” she said. “I missed the kids, Teaching is a job and being up there as an administrator is a whole completely different job.”
But it was during this time that she became re-acquainted with Kristy Dunn, interviewing and ultimately hiring her following Dunn’s graduation from Lyon College in 2004.
“That felt really odd, because Father John Connell was also in that interview,” recalls Dunn, who teaches seventh grade. “Here I was interviewing with the two people who had played such a role in my life as a child.”
In the years since, Davidson returned to kindergarten where she continues to be inspired by the eagerness of the young minds and challenged by the changing times.
“I think that the big challenge is our Hispanic families. It’s hard sometimes to communicate because many don’t speak English,” she said. “But the kids do well, they learn it fast and they pick it up. My other Hispanic kids help out a whole lot; one of my little boys translates for me.”
Dunn, once a student and now a peer, said her career has been made easier for having Davidson to consult. In return, Dunn solidified a place of distinction a couple of years ago when she walked her daughter Andi into kindergarten, making her Davidson’s first third-generation student. Not that there’s anything in the immediate future to suggest she will be the last.
“The future holds that eventually I will retire,” Davidson said, playing coy as to when. “The one thing that has not changed in the Catholic schools is just how wonderful the kids are.”
