Joe Judge’s lessons from three exhausting days as kindergarten teacher

There is no official record of the unusual three days that made a huge impact on Joe Judge’s coaching career.

The West Point School District in Mississippi searched and searched and told The Post there is no personnel file and no payroll document to confirm Judge’s employment. In fact, the only mention of him is as the spouse and beneficiary to his wife, a high school teacher in the district for three years.

But don’t tell Judge – the new head coach of the Giants – the memories of his three-day stint as a kindergarten physical education teacher don’t exist. They are too vivid to be a lie.

“What I learned coaching P.E. for three days in West Point School District was the patience you have to have with children,” said Judge, now a father of four. “I had five or six classes a day in a classroom, not a gymnasium.

“I figured out I had to have an organized plan with these kids that covered the full 60 minutes. If I let any detail in that plan go to waste, it was going to be chaos. I had kids dancing on window sills. I had kids peeing themselves. I figured out you have to keep them busy, be prepared on the front end.”

The lesson carried over to his last eight years holding meetings and demanding the most on a practice field from millionaire athletes in their 20s and 30s as a Patriots assistant, including special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach. He won’t forget it in his newest leadership role.

“Regardless of who your audience is, you have to have something to keep them busy and occupied mentally and stimulated,” Judge said, “so they want to participate in what you are trying to accomplish.”

Judge finished his three-year stint as a graduate assistant at Mississippi State and was looking for his next coaching job in 2008, when a friend called with an opportunity to coach high school football, “make some money” and teach in the same district as his wife.

“I said, ‘Great, what job you got?’” Judge said. “I’ve got a master’s degree. I’m a dissertation short of PhD at this moment. He goes, ‘We’ve got a kindergarten PE job open. Best job in the district. All you have to do is you show up, play some dodgeball with the kids and you go home.’”

Not quite.

“If you’ve ever seen the movie ‘Kindergarten’ Cop where (actor Arnold Schwarzenegger) comes home just exhausted beyond belief, that was me,” Judge said.

“I came home after the first three days and I could barely stand. At the end of the third day, I got a phone call from (coach) Eddie Garfinkle, who offered me a job at Birmingham Southern. I remember when the phone rang, I looked at my wife and said, ‘I’m going to take this job right now.’”

Why don’t the records exist?

“I still never got a paycheck for those three days,” Judge said. “I’m sure there is interest collecting on it by now.”

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