In this final series, the author draws wisdom from the story of Hansel and Gretel to recommend a path forward and to call everyone to action in the critical work of educating every young adolescent. The author believes that middle school educators can learn an important lesson about survival during difficult times from the classic German fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, two young adolescents who faced great difficulty. He thinks that the power of this fairy tale lies in its essence as a metaphor for the predicament that all of the people occasionally find themselves in: lost in the dark woods and needing to find their way home. The important lesson for middle school educators and researchers, he thinks, comes from understanding the two different ways in which Hansel tried to find his way home after being abandoned. [For Part 2, see EJ868547.]