This guide presents a new focus, called future options education, for career and college planning for students in the middle grades. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of future options education, describing it as a sustained, comprehensive, age- and stage-appropriate mix of guidance and counseling, with an enhanced curriculum and supplemental programs and activities that provide young adolescents with the knowledge and experiences they need to forge a robust sense of personal resourcefulness. Chapter 2 describes a variety of activities that enable young adolescents and their parents to develop a consciousness about the many positive options available to students after high school. Chapter 3 examines common strategies that assure each student a relationship with a caring adult, and that coordinate the actions and activities of other adults and institutions. Chapter 4 discusses the importance of assessment. Chapter 5 considers the development of a future options plan by discussing what the plan is, why it is needed, when it is developed, how it is developed, and how to get started. Chapter 6 presents information about three middle schools currently practicing future options education. Chapter 7 lists recommendations for organizing a future options education initiative. Chapter 8 looks at changes that have occurred in the economy and society, and suggests that schools failing to move with these trends are schools that fail. Chapter 9 offers a checklist approach for evaluating future options education interventions. (LLL)