Rusty Roden has been living out his dream of teaching agriculture for more than three decades and while he still has a few more years before he hangs up his hat, he’s thankful that he has been given the opportunity to end his career in his own backyard at Holly Pond High School.

Roden grew up within an agriculture family — his father bought livestock and his mother maintained poultry houses — and he knew from a very young age he wanted a future in the industry.

“Agriculture’s always been my lifestyle. We had a super good program here at Holly Pond and my Ag teacher, Mr. Daryl Hicks, inspired me to be an Ag teacher. That’s what I wanted to do from middle school on up,” Roden said.

While Roden followed in his family’s footsteps, as far as his profession is concerned, he said that his college of choice makes him the “oddball” of the family. Despite being raised among diehard Alabama fans, Roden chose to attend Auburn University where he graduated with a degree — and later a Master’s — in Agriculture education before quickly entering the workforce as a teacher at West Point High School.

“I left Auburn on a Friday after taking a final and I started working at West Point the next Monday,” Roden said.

Roden would remain in his position at West Point for 24 years, forming relationships with students — including the current West Point Ag Teacher and FFA Sponsor Ethan Lake — that he maintains to this day.

“The relationships that you build with those students who get involved [in FFA] is unlike any other organization. You build a relationship that not only lasts through their high school career, but most of the time it lasts into adulthood,” Roden said.

Roden said he thought he was done teaching when he left West Point to take the Co-op Coordinator position at the career center, but after only a year, he felt called to return to teaching when Holly Pond’s former Ag teacher Randy Wilkins retired — and in the process fulfill one his mother’s final requests.

“I decided that I wanted to end my career close to home. That’s something my mom really wanted before she passed away in 2011, she really wanted me to teach back at home where I grew up at,” Roden said.

Over the last 5 to 10 years, Roden has seen a major shift in who is joining FFA with more students with no background in agriculture, showing an interest in the field. He attributes this to the organization’s focus on developing leadership skills that translate into a variety of careers both in and out of the agriculture industry.

Roden has taught students at both West Point and Holly Pond who have gone on to become everything from public speakers to engineers developing heavy machinery for brands such at Caterpillar. He said that several of these students first entered his classroom as shy and timid freshman, but after four years of involvement with FFA, they would graduate as completely changed individuals.

“What FFA will do, is it will take a student who is unsure of themselves, and it will make them blossom, because in here everybody gets an opportunity to be themselves and to be their best,” Roden said.