Facilitator's Guide to Failure Is Not an Option®: 6 Principles for Making Student Success the ONLY Option, 2nd Edition

Updated Edition of Bestseller!

Demonstrate how six powerful principles can help ensure that failure is never an option!

An ideal companion to the second edition of the bestseller, Failure Is Not an Option®, this step-by-step guide provides staff developers and workshop facilitators with all the tools to help school leaders create successful, sustainable high-performing schools. Aligned with the chapters of Alan M. Blankstein’s award-winning book, these activities, discussion questions, and field-tested resources demonstrate how to avoid 10 common routes to failure and are designed around six guiding principles:

1. Common mission, vision, values, and goals
2. Achievement for all students through prevention and intervention systems
3. Collaborative teaming focused on teaching for learning
4. Data-based decisions for continuous improvement
5. Active family and community engagement
6. Building sustainable leadership capacity

Reflecting the updated edition's greater emphasis on diversity, assessment for learning, intervention and support for students at risk, and schooling as a community endeavor, the facilitator's guide features

1. Field-tested resources referenced in Failure Is Not An Option®, Second Edition, including tools for applying the six principles
2. Workshop activities
3. Discussion questions
4. Chapter content summaries
5. Suggestions for further reading and reflection
6. A workshop evaluation form

The Facilitator’s Guide to Failure Is Not an Option®, Second Edition is ideal for staff developers or anyone leading groups of any size—pairs, small workshops, or large seminars.

The resources in this facilitator's guide can also be found at the HOPE Foundation Web site at www.hopefoundation.org.

About The Author:
Award-winning author and visionary educational leader Alan M. Blankstein is founder and president of the HOPE Foundation, a not-for-profit organization whose honorary chair is Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A former “high-risk” youth, Alan began his career in education as a music teacher, has worked in youth-serving organizations since 1983, and has created award-winning publications and video staff development programs. He is the author of the best-selling book Failure Is Not an Option®: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools, which received the 2005 Book of the Year award from Learning Forward (formerly NSDC), and has been nominated for three other national and international awards.

A former “high risk” youth, Alan began his career in education as a music teacher and has worked in youth-serving organizations since 1983, including the March of Dimes, Phi Delta Kappa, and the National Educational Service (now Solution Tree) which he founded in 1987 and directed for 12 years.

In addition to authorship of this award-winning book, Alan is Publisher of three Failure Is Not an Option® video series and Senior Editor along with Paul Houston of the thirteen-volume The Soul of Educational Leadership series. Alan also co-authored the Reaching Today’s Youth curriculum and has published articles in Educational Leadership, The School Administrator, Executive Educator, High School Magazine, Reaching Today’s Youth, and Inside the Workshop. Alan has also provided keynote presentations and workshops for virtually every major educational organization.

Alan is on the Harvard International Principals Centers advisory board, served as Board member for Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, is former Co-Chair of Indiana University’s Neal Marshall Black Culture Center’s Community Network and advisor to the Faculty and Staff for Student Excellence (FASE) mentoring program. He also served as advisory board member for the Forum on Race, Equity, and Human Understanding with the Monroe County Schools in Indiana, and on the Board of Trustees for the Jewish Child Care Agency (JCCA), in which he was once a youth in residence.