♪ The saying goes that you learn by doing students at Louisville Middle School are learning their way around the kitchen through Jefferson County, Public Schools explore program.

Kentucky Edition went there to see how students at Highland Middle School are learning about life skills and career opportunities.

>> It is the grand ole opening of our culinary lab.

And so we're super excited to provide those opportunities and hands-on learning materials for kids.

>> And where they have access to cooking materials, right?

So cooking materials that are directly connected to the culinary industry.

What I found at the beginning of the year, my first class is going to be culinary.

I was really excited.

Last year.

We didn't have a kitchen like this is our first year having like this big kitchen with all the microwaves and ovens and everything.

So this is our first year with all this equipment.

The whole idea behind the Explorer program is to engage students.

We want kids to want to come to school.

And so what explore does is it provides students opportunities for authentic learning that go way far beyond the textbook or screen can revive.

Last year we added the Explorer program.

We had culinary.

We have environmental science and we have a business economics.

We have our model.

We use grow its cook and then sell it.

So in.

>> I believe it's March and April were going to have a farmers market.

So we've been using like a lot of like we like to use a variance that we've grown in our foods.

We make pizza and then we have like cheesy bread over there and stuff like that.

It's great to have like an actual shipping here.

Instead of just a teacher.

Nice to have like someone who's had experience like in the real world, things like that.

I mean, I really like to make us food and then we get to like even after it's nice.

It's like a second.

But we have like, I mean, it's like meals, you know, like we like made like giant pizzas today.

And it was like really good.

So I like having that.

It's for all kids.

>> And so kids who are not motivated or empowered by simple math, they are empowered by explore.

They're in power by hands-on offensive morning.

It's nice to get experience because during the day sometimes you just said it like this one gives real world experience.

>> So those kids, those kids know what's for dinner.

Elouise says she's used the cooking skills.

She's learned through her class to make pizza at home with their family.

But it's