In most schools, a new teacher assumes essentially the same responsibilities as an experienced one, often to the detriment of both the novice teacher and her students. Nationally representative data shows that one in 10 new teachers in the U.S. has no student teaching experience (Podolsky et al., 2016). Furthermore, in 2023 schools in 49 states plus the District of Columbia employed more than 360,000 teachers who were not fully certified, meaning they had little or no training prior to entering the classroom (Tan et al., 2024).
To complicate the situation, schools without strong processes and commitments to ensure teachers engage in team-based, collaborative learning often leave teachers practicing alone and give them limited opportunities to share their experiences and learn with and from one another.
A lack of support is a top factor contributing to novice teachers’ early exit from the job—7 out of 10 early career teachers abandon or consider leaving the classroom within their first five years of teaching, according to 2025 survey data collected and analyzed by the Center for American Progress.
Mentoring is a powerful way to change these patterns and support new teachers regardless of their backgrounds. Yet only one in three new teachers has access to any form of mentoring or induction, and those programs that do exist vary in quality and intensity, according to Sharron Helmke, a certified professional coach and senior professional learning leader at Learning Forward. Helmke and her Learning Forward colleagues have long partnered with districts and schools to take a more effective, instructionally-focused approach that helps teachers develop into highly effective instructors who drive student achievement.
Now, a new book co-authored by Leslie Hirsh Ceballos, Helmke, and Thomas Manning grounds new teacher mentoring in field-leading professional learning research and the authors’ experiences designing and facilitating Mentor Academies around the globe. Mentoring New Teachers: A Framework for Growth (Learning Forward, 2025), is a hands-on guidebook for implementing an instructionally-focused mentor cycle. It highlights educational systems where the mentor cycle is a foundational component of high-quality professional learning.
The Learning Forward approach detailed in Mentoring New Teachers is qualitatively different from the traditional “buddy system” approach to mentoring that is visible in many schools. Instead, it follows a set of intentional steps to facilitate specific types of action, reflection, and improvement. Learning Forward shaped its mentoring approach around a cycle of inquiry and support focused on three phases of diagnosing new teacher needs, providing coaching support to address those needs, and monitoring progress to measure growth and evaluate impact.
- Diagnose phase: During this initial phase of the cycle, mentors are asking and then answering the question, “What does my mentee need?” They observe new teachers in their classrooms, analyze data on what they see and hear, and use evidence to set a learning goal with their mentees that will impact their teaching practice and their students’ learning.
- Coach phase: This phase has mentors answering the question, “How am I going to support my mentee?” Mentors select from various types of support, from providing resources to modeling or co-teaching in the classroom. This phase also includes debriefing with mentees, reflecting, and making adjustments as needed.
- Monitor phase: During this phase mentors look at data from the support they’ve been providing to evaluate the impact of that work and determine the next steps for the new teacher. The mentor plans for and facilitates reflection conversations to develop the mentee’s capacity for self-analysis and to become a reflective practitioner committed to his or her own continuous improvement.
The book is written for all educators involved in planning, implementing, or supervising mentoring for new teachers, and includes a robust collection of tools and resources aligned with each of its three sections. According to Ceballos, a Texas elementary school principal, Mentoring New Teachers is intentionally written for a broad audience.
“A mentor could read it and refine their own skills and craft,” she said. “A school leader can use it to develop on-campus mentors or sharpen their own skills and craft. District-level leaders will find it to be a research-based resource that honors teacher voice and collaborative learning culture.”
Instructionally-focused mentor cycles foster positive habits and ways of relating to colleagues and students, Helmke explained. “It provides the instrumental and social supports new teachers need, forms the bedrock of career-long beliefs and practices, and keeps them in the profession at a time when high levels of attrition are causing significant hardship. Most importantly, this approach can expedite the improvement of novice teachers and thereby support improved outcomes for their students.”
Mentoring New Teachers: A Framework for Growth is available at our bookstore: https://learningforward.org/store/
