Back by popular demand, Dairy Council of California brings the cow milking demonstrations to the LA County Fair. Efrain Valenzuela, Mobile Dairy Classroom manager, presents free milking demonstrations to students and teachers throughout the day. Because the fair is closed to the general public Wednesdays through Fridays between 9am to 12 pm and only admits school children in the morning, Efrain usually sees up to four-hundred students per presentation and over 34,000 students during the course of the fair. The fair opened on Sept 8th and ends Oct 1st.

In addition to learning where milk comes from, Efrain adds information, vocabulary and other agricultural facts to the lesson. It is a fun and exciting way for students to learn how milk is produced and processed and how calcium can help build strong bones.

When students and teachers come into the milking parlor they see various breeds of dairy cows, milk and milk products, and a 20 to 30 minute educational presentation, so they are getting a complete picture of what comes from cows. “We’re giving a whole dairy lesson. We show the complete milking process. The [LA County] fair used to have a working dairy processing center, so it’s a great way to show the complete processing cycle,” says Efrain.

“The best part about Dairy Council being involved with the fair is that we get to be a part of an already established event and can reach a large group of students. The fair believes in education, and we want to support their effort,” says Valenzuela.

After the presentation, California teachers are offered free nutrition education materials from Dairy Council of California staff. While at the booth, students are entertained with healthy activities such as, the Dairy Clue game, the Meat, Beans and Nuts and Grains Spinning Wheel game, and the Fruits and Vegetable Memory game. Parents are also invited to learn how they can support nutrition education at their child's school.

Kelly Hawekotte, Customer Service Coordinator, noted an interesting question. A parent asked how she can tell whether she was buying California milk. She wanted to know this because if buying California milk helps support the Dairy Council of California’s nutrition education efforts, then that is what she wants to do.

The Mobile Dairy Classroom is age appropriate outdoor assembly that visits California elementary schools throughout the school year and acts as a continuation of the milking demonstration presented at the fair. “Being here at the fair is a great launching pad for us for the beginning of the school year because of the large number of students we get to see,” says Efrain.

The Mobile Dairy Classroom, provided by the Dairy Council of California, is a free assembly given to eligible elementary schools throughout California every school year. Because there are only six mobile units in California, the assembly only comes around every 3 to 6 years in certain districts. If your school is interested in learning more about this assembly please visit www.dairycouncilofca.org/educators/mobiledairy.

Dairy Council of California

In August, I spoke at the Association of Nutrition Service Agencies annual conference in San Diego. My presentation, Developing Nutrition Education Programs That Target Behavior Change, focused on how to create programs that really work for the intended audience. I started the presentation with a quick overview of the key messages in Dairy Council of California programs: eat nutrient-rich foods, include 30-60 minutes of physical activity most days of the week, all foods can fit in a healthy diet, and convenience, taste and family/cultural traditions must all be considered when planning daily food choices.

Armed with this understanding of the our nutrition philosophy, attendees learned about our behavior change model. 

1. The model begins with identifying choices that increase risks and the benefits of better choices which can improve outcome expectancies.
2. The next phase is to engage the user in the content to help them identify potential changes through reflection.
3. To facilitate behavior change clients must increase self-efficacy, improve decisional balance, set goals and increase intrinsic motivators (external motivators and rewards have not been demonstrated as effective).
4. The final phases are the adoption and maintenance of behavior change. Critical is encouraging social support, relapse prevention and addressing setbacks that do occur.

The principles of the behavior change model were illustrated using our new Shaping Up My Choices third grade program and our newly revised Activity & Eating program. These examples allowed the attendees to visualize how the steps were incorporated in the program development process.

The third and final portion of the presentation stressed the importance of including health literacy techniques. Most health education materials are written at or above a tenth grade reading level when they should be written at the sixth grade level. To achieve behavior change, users must understand the information and how to use it. Attendees broke into small groups and identified how to improve a program to achieve the principles of the behavior change model.

ANSA conference attendees come from across the country and from various agencies- and serve a wide range of populations- so the feedback received was from multiple viewpoints. The group found this interactive presentation beneficial, particularly the focus on readability and use of plain language during program development. It was reassuring that the feedback so closely match the changes made to Activity & Eating. One attendee mentioned he was very fond of the previous edition of Activity & Eating and could not imagine liking the new one better. After seeing the updates, he was even more thrilled about having this new resource available. As attendees asked for copies of the booklet to share with their health educators, I knew we had created a very usable booklet that can improve food and activity choices.

Trina Robertson, MS, RD

Project Manager

We are proud to announce the availability of our new third grade curriculum, Shaping Up My Choices. This curriculum, which is free to California third grade teachers and available at reasonable prices outside California, contains ten lessons that have students problem-solving, reasoning and using critical-thinking techniques as they learn about nutrition and physical activity.

Specific lessons include:

• learning about food labels
• estimating serving-sizes using hand symbols
• how to make healthy beverage choices
• learning about nutrients while learning the song, “A Tooty Ta”

One activity that students especially love is the Lunchtime Launch lesson where they draw what they had for lunch and then figure out what they are missing to make their lunch healthier.

The curriculum was created by a Dairy Council of California staff team, consisting of Tammy Anderson-Wise, Mary Anne Burkman, Trina Robertson and me. During the 24 months of program development, we developed several drafts getting input from classroom teachers to help evaluate and change it. Thank you to all of the wonderful teachers that helped with the curriculum development.

The curriculum comes with a wide variety of teaching resources, including transparencies, CD-ROM, food pictures and vocabulary cards. Learn more about Shaping Up My Choices in the classroom programs section of this website and if you are a third grade teacher, order today. While you’re there, become a certified Shaping Up My Choices Teacher by taking the free, online teacher training. By becoming certified you will learn the basics for teaching nutrition and strategies for integrating nutrition into core subjects while using the Dairy Council of California’s curriculum.

Debbie Souza Asada

Northern California Schools Supervisor