The preschool education center offers a developmentally based curriculum focused on agriculture, art, language and self-help. The center also serves as a lab for the UMaine Psychology Department and other academic programs.
Duplissie, who has been using Ag in the Classroom’s food, land and people curriculum since 2008, integrates agriculture into every subject and conducts several agriculture-related activities with the college students and preschool children each week.
“I’m from northern Maine,” Duplissie says. “I grew up doing agriculture, so it’s second nature to me. A lot of preschool and college students don’t understand the importance of agriculture in our lives.”
Teaching children about agriculture while they’re young is important, Duplissie says, because at the preschool age, they’re learning and retaining information quickly.
“If they can learn about agriculture now, they can build upon it later,” he says. “If you explain and demonstrate agriculture to children, they’re able to grasp it, understand it and work with it.”
Each year, Maine Agriculture in the Classroom (MAITC) recognizes an outstanding elementary or secondary school teacher who uses agricultural education materials and/or activities in the classroom.
With Duplissie’s guidance, preschool children build greenhouses, plant gardens, visit farms and hatch chicks every year at the center. Teaching children where their food comes from is an important focus of Duplissie’s curriculum.
“We make snack with the children,” he says, adding the students have grown pumpkins and made cookies and muffins with the squash. “For lunch, we ask what they had and where it comes from. We can relate it back to agriculture and nutrition. It’s easy to relate things back to agriculture.”
At the center, Duplissie works with college students from several majors, including marine science, early development and nursing. He says he enjoys watching the students learn while they teach others.
“I get the chance to work with students who see and use education firsthand,” he says. “The more experience and the more you do things, the more it sticks with you. We want them to see and follow children’s development, and help enhance it.”
MAITC is a grassroots program coordinated by the United States Department of Agriculture and housed at the Maine Department of Agriculture. It aims to help students gain a greater awareness of the role of agriculture in the economy and society so they will become citizens who support wise agricultural policies and local agriculture endeavors, according to its website.
The program is funded by the Maine Agricultural specialty license plate, grants and private sponsors.
MAITC promotes the understanding of the food and fiber system in Maine and the nation by providing information of agricultural concepts to teachers, students and interested residents.
Duplissie and his program have received several MAITC grants to boost the agriculture curriculum. His program has provided multiple lesson plans available through MAITC and used by educators throughout the state.
“This recognition shows that our little program is doing some pretty neat things; even a small program like this can be reaching out. Our projects are being taken by other teachers in other parts of the state and they are doing what we have created,” he says.
Duplissie says even though he’s honored to be the 2015 MAITC Teacher of the Year, he doesn’t teach for recognition.
“I like what I’m doing,” he says. “I do it because I enjoy seeing the kids learn and grow. Those are the things that fuel me to continue on.”
As the 2015 MAITC Teacher of the Year, Duplissie will attend the National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference in June 2015 in Louisville, Kentucky to network with teachers and experience programs from around the country.
More about MAITC and the award are online.