Alex Rodgers

Sep 2, 2024 | agriculture.com | Alex Rodgers |FFA Advisor |Lisa Prater |Southeast Warren

In this episode, I have a chat with Alex Rodgers. He is an ag educator, coach, and FFA advisor at Southeast Warren Community School District in south-central Iowa, where my sons went to school. He’s pictured above with two of my boys, Luke and Will. There are 251 school districts in Iowa with a larger enrollment than Southeast Warren, but there are only five with a larger FFA chapter. At Will’s final FFA banquet, the students introduced him in the most fitting way: a single dad of 152 kids.

Feb 14, 2024 | medium.com | Alex Rodgers

I spent years too socially anxious to speak to people. i always felt like i had to put on a front, live up to an idea i had in my head about what other people would like. i never felt like i fit in anywhere, conversations would be hurried because i was afraid people would see the real me. If they spoke to me long enough, they would strip back the layers of who I was presenting and see this scared little boy.

Aug 1, 2023 | cpbj.com | Alex Rodgers

By the time we arrived at Heathrow for our flight home from vacation in Italy, the kids were entirely untethered from their schedules, sleep deprived, and throwing tantrums so epic that two Heathrow employees ‘invited’ us to take our daughter to a kids’ play area just downstairs. Two of our kids had ear infections and were on antibiotic drops which, it turns out, are difficult to administer in an airport when the child has to lie on his side for five minutes without moving.

Jun 27, 2023 | cpbj.com | Alex Rodgers

I’ve found a word for the strange sadness that comes with the overwhelming love we have for our kids. It is a Japanese word, ‘setsunai’. Setsunai is described beautifully here as the “painful twinge at the edge of a memory, the joy in the knowledge that everything is temporary.”For me, setsunai comes from the understanding that I lived a full life before our kids were born, and they’ve only known a smidgen of their life that is yet to come.

May 30, 2023 | cpbj.com | Alex Rodgers

I can’t make myself move anymore. Two of our three children wail from their time-out chairs after ignoring my calls to stop hitting each other and sliding across the kitchen floor. Gravity wins. As a parent I don’t often think of the level of activity I have to maintain to keep our little world humming along until my bones begin to ache from sheer exhaustion.