Hands On: Real-World Lessons for Middle School Classrooms is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary educational program designed to teach middle school students key food safety concepts, while meeting state mandated curriculum standards for math, science, and social studies. These research-based, highly effective instructional strategies are organized into lesson plans, student labs, and hands-on activities for all subject areas (math, science, social studies and language arts) for one week. Teachers of all subjects work together. The interdisciplinary lessons allow students to build on food safety concepts from all subjects, thus improving knowledge and retention.

The Hands On: Real-World Lessons for Middle School Classrooms program was developed by a former middle school teacher and the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Tennessee. Participation in Hands On is free to the schools because of funding through a grant from the National Integrated Food Safety Initiative and a donation from The Grocery Manufactures Association.

Hands On: Real-World Lessons for Middle School Classrooms is the new name for the Food Safety in the Classroom program. The name was changed to reflect the program’s focus on interdisciplinary education. The initial goal of Hands On is to teach middle school students about the importance of food safety and proper food handling.

However, since the Hands On curriculum is based on effective educational theories this program can serve as a strong model of best practices for interdisciplinary education at the middle school level. Each lesson is designed to follow Robert Gagne's theory of instruction, and to bring high levels of student engagement with ample opportunities to practice higher order thinking and creative problem solving. Current research shows that the retention rate for the Hands On content six weeks after implementation is 86 percent.

The professional development segment of the Hands On program was also designed following best practice theories. It was designed to equip teachers with research based instructional strategies to add to their skill set.