Students’ Milk Revolution blog goes viral
By Kjell Wickstrom
- A photo contest entry for the Milk Revolution blog. Photo courtesy of Milk Revolution.
GLENORA — Students from Westglen School have received international attention for their blog about healthy eating habits.
Adrienne Swelander’s Grade 5 class started a blog last year, in Grade 4, called The Milk Revolution. The idea came about after the class had watched a clip of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, where he had filled a school bus with the sugar that students consume by drinking chocolate milk.
“It really was just a health lesson,” said Swelander. “It was really only going to be our class, and changing our milk.”
The class spread the word through Twitter, and Oliver found out about what the class was doing. This made the blog go viral.
“He tweeted our blog address out,” said Swelander. “We had about 7,500 hits in one day.”
- The twitter post that kicked the Milk Revolution blog into high gear and garnered it thousands of hits. Twitter post by Jamie Oliver.
The blog is written by the students and includes videos that they made for YouTube, called MooTV.
The kids think their message is important and are proud of what they have accomplished.
“We don’t want people to catch bad stuff, like diabetes and heart disease,” said Marcus Ward, a Grade 5 student.
“And it’s not like we’re saying you can’t drink chocolate milk,” said Kate Manning, another Grade 5 student. “We’re telling them that it’s not the best thing for you and you shouldn’t be drinking it every day. You should make the healthy choice.”
All of this has been a valuable learning experience for the kids, and it has been something they have had fun at. They learned skills like working together and collaboration as well as how much work it can take to produce something like a blog or a video.
Swelander said, “The biggest thing I see in them is the confidence that they can change something.”
“Just one classroom can change and entire city,” said Cole Brander, a Grade 5 student.
It will be interesting to see where the class goes from here.
This has all come about at a time when junk food in schools is a hot topic. Edmonton Public Schools instituted a junk food ban this fall. And Edmonton Catholic Schools has also brought in nutrition policies to help students make healthy choices.