Mr. Byerly still wonders what some of his American history students thought when that rattlesnake showed up on the menu the night after the wagon master shot it. HOW DO our students learn best? How can we fashion efficient education so as to increase their proficiency levels? We educators are constantly designing and implementing new ideas by which we can increase the amount of in our classrooms. Cognitive psychologists have developed schema theory in an effort to explain the structures that individual humans create to organize new knowledge and understandings and to fit them into their evolving views of the world. Educators similarly speak of the experience factor in learning. And such learning involves three primary components: modeling, collaborating, and simulating. Modeling a specific behavior most often means that the teacher demonstrates for students a skill to be learned. On the other hand, a student who has attained proficiency in a given skill can frequently model that proficiency for peers. Collaborating can mean that the teacher works with one student or with a group of students, that students work with their peers, or even that an invited guest practitioner works with the students and the teacher. Simulating entails enacting a skill within a context, often created by the teacher, that mirrors the real-world contexts in which the skill is used. All that is easy to say, perhaps. But what does this kind of experiential education look like in practice? Likely and Not-So-Likely Places Some disciplines lend themselves readily to modeling, collaborating, and simulating. Construction technologies, for example, can be used to process wood and metal into everything from concession stands and press boxes for the football stadium to desks, chairs, and cabinets for offices. Agriculture curricula generally build toward bona fide production and marketing efforts. For example, fish can be farmed for a school fish fry, livestock can be raised for auction, or flowers and shrubs can be grown for a Mother's Day garden show and sale. The home economics department might operate a restaurant for faculty members once a month. This exercise would involve students in every aspect of commercial food presentation, including menu writing, food preparation, and waiting on tables. During the 1980s, I developed a pilot television production program that grew into a small student-run studio that produced sitcoms, documentaries, and news programs for a local cable channel. It's important to note here that cable companies are obligated by law to provide time to educational institutions. The details of these arrangements are spelled out in the contracts between cities and their cable providers. Student-run radio stations give students experience with another medium and can also be self-supporting. Art production classes are always experiential in character, as students apply artistic theory to the production of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and the like. The marketing aspect of the art world can be developed through such activities as art shows and art auctions. And the same holds true for music and drama productions, which are created in much the same way by students in schools as they are by professionals outside them. What's more, promoting a performance for a school requires the same basic public relations and communications skills as those employed in promoting professional shows. From science experiments to mock trials in social studies to the school newspaper, experiential pops up across the curriculum as educators seek to give their students a sense of how works in the world. On the Trail of Experiential Learning The experiential projects I've mentioned above probably won't strike readers as anything out of the ordinary. But when the goal is to make the experience more real for students, much more elaborate designs are possible. …