This book: Active Teaching and Active Learning Strategies: Creating a Blueprint for Success, is the cumulative result of a year of reflecting, asking, and listening to questions, and comments, that many have concerning the education of our youth. The book's genesis however, started many years ago as the state of California, along with many other states, embraced a standards based accountability system. This accountability has now been coupled with the recent addition of The No Child Left Behind Legislation. In a real sense, we are entering both the best and worst of times. I say this because of the effects of high-stakes testing and the requirement that all students reach high levels of proficiency which admittedly, are very lofty goals. For this to be realized, changes will be required in teaching and assessment, as well as a more concentrated focus on student learning. The instructional design introduced in this book advocates four components: academic, social/collaborative, contextual, and cognitive/developmental. These components work in tandem with Active Teaching and Learning Strategies. Combined, they form a student responsive instructional methodology, which optimizes student success, and academic achievement. We wanted to create a book that demonstrated to those of us in the field of education the value of looking at academic standards with data about our students, and reflecting on how this information should influence our choices concerning instructional practices and our perceptions about the students that we are entrusted with. The focus of this endeavor is to see all students achieve and succeed, and to keep passion and compassion at the heart of all that we do. It is the premise of this book that the difference between effective and outstanding teachers are that outstanding teachers care, know how to utilize data, practice active teaching strategies, and promote the active learning of students. Together these characteristics became the design, and course of action, that Created a Blueprint for Success.