Legendary Ag Teacher at Amber- Pocasset retires after 48 Years
AMBER, Okla. (KFOR) — The days are getting longer, winter wheat is heading out, and Ag Teacher Billy Scott is riding herd on a regional speech contest, a last for him, though he’s made a promise not to count.
“I’m not saying anything about this being my last and the students have been the same way,” he cautions.
Billy Landed the Ag job here straight out of OSU in 1976.
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“I had no goals,” he recalls. “As a matter of fact, when I first started I was just hoping to get through a year or two of it.”
To help encourage his early students and to put something over the cinder block office walls, he started hanging pictures and plaques of winning animals or winning categories at contests.
It’s a lot harder to get on these walls lately.
“Your criteria have changed,” we offer.
“As time went on,” he agrees. “When I started out I was putting up plaques that wouldn’t make the wall nowadays.”
The awards and stuffed trophy case are one measure of his success over nearly five decades of teaching.
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Walking the Amber-Pocasset High School halls and seeing former students, or kids whose parents went through his program makes another.
On this night, speech competitors like Kallyn Turner get six to eight minutes to deliver a speech they wrote to a three judge panel.
Their longtime teacher still loves seeing his students learn and grow.
He says, “You can see that they see the difference between what they’d been doing versus what they can do and it’s always fun to watch that.”
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For eighth graders like Madeline Norvell, a third generation ag student, and Jr. Elizabeth Bradford, Mr. Scott is more than a teacher.
“He’s one of our fathers, basically,” says Norvell.
“Best of the best,” agrees Bradford.
He could have gone for 50 years, but his professional standards were too high.
“I realized I didn’t have quite the energy I needed to do the things I had been doing,” he admits.
On this competition night, first and second place finishers will go on to area and state contests.
Billy Scott will be there for both one more time, but you’ll have to look for him.
Pillars of a community or school are often like that, holding things up without much fanfare.
“It’s my personal best,” smiles Scott.
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