Julie Dupris and her yellow SUV take early education to the far
ends of SBC
Whoever said
”
getting there is half the fun
”
has never followed Julie Dupris on her way to work.
On a gloomy, wet Tuesday morning, Dupris is driving her bright
yellow Ford Escape along the twists and turns of Panoche Road,
slowing only for large pools of standing water and occasional
oncoming traffic. Dupris has a date with eight preschool students,
and she doesn’t want to be late.
Julie Dupris and her yellow SUV take early education to the far ends of SBC
Whoever said “getting there is half the fun” has never followed Julie Dupris on her way to work.
On a gloomy, wet Tuesday morning, Dupris is driving her bright yellow Ford Escape along the twists and turns of Panoche Road, slowing only for large pools of standing water and occasional oncoming traffic. Dupris has a date with eight preschool students, and she doesn’t want to be late.
Dupris is the preschool specialist for the county’s Rural Mobile Preschool program, administered through the Tres Pinos Union School District and funded through a grant from First 5 San Benito. On any given weekday, Dupris can be found traveling down the back roads of the county, making her way to the six schools and various homes served by the program. She visits each school and home in the program once a week. On this particular Tuesday, Dupris is visiting Panoche School, a small two-room K-8 grade school with an enrollment of seven students located about 25 miles east of New Idria and almost an hour away from downtown Hollister.
“We love Miss Julie”
Dupris pulls her SUV into the gravel driveway of the school, just behind Nicole Gonzalez, who is bringing her 18-month old son, Mateo, to Dupris’ class. “Hi, Mateo,” Dupris calls out as Nicole gets Mateo out of his car seat. “Did you see me behind you? Are you ready for school today?”
Because of the rainy weather, Dupris is holding class inside the school – Ottalie Davis, Panoche’s principal/teacher, has moved her students inside a small “library” to make room for the eight preschoolers who are eagerly greeting Dupris as she walks in the door.
“Miss Julie is the best teacher in the whole world, isn’t she?” Davis said, as Dupris walks passed carrying the supplies and book bags she will use for the day’s lesson. “All of the rural teachers agree – Julie is just awesome. We love Miss Julie.”
After a few minutes’ prep time, Dupris is ready to start her class, and the students sit in small chairs around a long, rectangular table. She begins with a song, and quickly eight small but loud voices are chiming in to the chorus of “I Had a Little Turtle.” After the song, Dupris pulls out a felt storyboard, and passes around a plastic bag filled with small stuffed animals with Velcro attached to their backs. She then reads aloud “Brown Bear, Brown Bear,” and when the next animal is named in the story, the student holding that animal sticks it onto the storyboard while saying the animal’s color. The lesson, while obviously fun for the students, works to reinforce both color recognition and the names of different animals.
“Would you like to paint today?” asks Dupris as she moves seamlessly into the next portion of the lesson “Put on your smocks and get ready and we’ll hand out paper and paints.”
With the help of some of the parents, many of whom stay for their child’s class, Dupris puts Tempra paints on paper plates and hands out large sheets of white paper and paint brushes. In a matter of moments, each of the students is well on their way to creating their latest masterpiece.
“They love to paint,” Dupris said. “For the county fair, I submitted art work for each student from every school in the free art category for their age group, and one of the students one Best of Show. It was really fun.”
After painting, Dupris and her parent helpers clean up, taking each of the students into the bathroom to wash their hands. From there, the kids move to a small carpet on the floor for story time.
“With us being so rural, the kids don’t get a whole lot of interaction with other kids,” said Sue Borba, whose daughter Sage Rose, 4, attends Dupris’ Panoche class each Tuesday. “We see each other in passing, but everyone is so busy. Kids don’t really go to play at the other kids’ houses.”
Sage’s older brother, Dustin, is in seventh grade at Panoche, and Borba says she is happy Sage has the opportunity to experience a classroom setting before she is enrolled in kindergarten.
“When Sage first gets here, she is a bit reserved, but she is getting more and more used to the classroom setting,” Borba said. “She’s not so afraid to leave Mom and Dad. When it is time for her to start school, she’ll already have an idea of what to expect.”
Nicole Gonzalez agrees with Borba, saying the socialization the program provides is what prompted her to enroll Mateo.
“Living out here, the kids’ don’t get much of a social life,” Gonzales said. “As he gets older, it will be nice for the educational aspect also, but right now it is helping Mateo get used to being around others. [Dupris] is the only one besides me who can hold him.”
After story time, Dupris settles the kids back at the table, and Davis and her students help serve popcorn and orange slices for snack time. As they eat, Dupris hands parents a bright red book bag filled with four age-appropriate books, part of the program’s weekly lending library to help foster parent/child story time at home.
Once their snack is finished, the parents bundle up their children and get them ready to go home, while Dupris loads up her supplies, preparing for her next stop – a family home on Browns Valley Road.
“Good-bye, Miss Julie,” calls out one young student as she runs out on the playground with a ball to enjoy a brief respite in the day’s rainy weather.
“When I first started this job, I thought these schools were so far away,” Dupris said. “Now, I pass homes along the way and know I could stop in and visit friends I’ve made. I’ve met so many people. I have to wonder, who wouldn’t love this job? It is so fun.”
“This is an extremely important program that benefits so many kids”
The rural mobile preschool program started in 2001, thanks to a grant funded through the county’s First Five program. Kathy Green, the former teacher/principal at Jefferson School, hoped to provide children living in the more remote areas of San Benito with the opportunity to experience a school setting.
“Kathy felt there was a need for the kids in these areas to have some sort of preschool familiarity so that they didn’t have to come right from home into a school setting,” Dupris said. “The idea was really just to give them the basic preschool experience.”
Today, the program serves 23 children living in the boundaries of the rural school districts of Bitterwater-Tully, Cienega, Jefferson, Panoche, southern Tres Pinos and Willow Grove, although Dupris said Tres Pinos is close enough to Hollister that many parents choose to enroll their children in mainstream preschool programs in town.
Unfortunately, Dupris and the rural school administrators learned funding for First Five may be reduced statewide, and there is a possibility the Rural Mobile Preschool program could be cut back, or even eliminated.
“We really don’t want that to happen,” Davis said. “I brought it up at the last principal’s meeting. This is an extremely important program that benefits so many kids out here. We have to find a way to keep Julie around.”
Dupris spends her week driving out to each of the local communities, meeting with children either at their homes or at school once a week. The classes held at school are important not only because they provide exposure to a classroom setting but because the children are allowed to interact with others their own age, Dupris said.
“The socialization part is what is really important for those kids,” she said.
Curriculum for the program follows state guidelines for pre-kindergarten. Students are exposed to reading, writing their letters and basic counting and motor skills. Because her students come from very varied backgrounds, Dupris said it is sometimes hard to make sure the program remains balanced.
“We have children from lots of different backgrounds, culturally and socio-economically,” she said. “For example, some of the parents are very well educated – they are biologists or teachers or work at Pinnacles National Monument – so they know that they need to read to their children every day. But some children come from Spanish-speaking homes, and often they haven’t lived in this country for very long. We have to teach these parents also so that they see themselves as their child’s first teacher.”
Dupris took over the program in early 2005 after the program’s original specialist, Joyce Swett, left in June 2004 to take a job with First Five. By this time, Green had left Jefferson as well, and the program was in danger of being eliminated. But Lou Medeiros, Tres Pinos School principal, felt the program was important, and made a pitch keep it going. Medeiros became the program’s administrator, and went about hiring a new teacher.
Dupris was a long-time resident of Hollister and had served as the director of Go Kids, Inc. at R.O. Hardin School for six years. But changes in the organization made Dupris feel it was time to look for other work.
“When I left Go Kids, I thought I was done working with children,” she said. “When I saw the posting (for the preschool specialist job) I said ‘what the heck is this?’ I had never heard of a job like it. But my husband said it sounded like it would be perfect for me, and I liked the whole idea of it. When I got the job, I was very happily surprised.”
Even though she was raised as a “city girl,” Dupris said driving out to such removed spots has never been a problem for her.
“I have never lived in the country, but my husband is a Sioux Indian from South Dakota, and when you go to the reservation, it’s a very different world. You learn to adapt to an area that you aren’t normally a part of,” she said. “I think that experience has really helped me. Bugs and stuff and being in the outdoors don’t bother me at all.”
One of the more challenging parts of her job, Dupris said, is being accepted by the families who choose to participate in the program and in turn, accepting the lifestyles these families have chosen for themselves and their children.
“I, like most people in San Benito County, never really thought about what exists out there past Bolado Park. But these people are amazing. They work really hard,” Dupris said. “Then again, when you go into someone’s home to do what I do, there is this weight I feel on me to make them feel comfortable and obviously, you need to become friends. When you are caring for someone’s child, you share a common goal with them to protect that child.”
The Rural Mobile Preschool program has graduated approximately 30 students since its inception in 2001, and Dupris said one of the best parts of her job is seeing her former students do well in their respective school settings.
“I was just out at the Pinnacles’ centennial celebration, and students from Jefferson School were there,” she said. “I saw two of my students, Jacob Ballinger and Rafael Miramontes, singing with the rest of the school, and they were so cute! That’s what’s great about my job.”
