Mentoring New Teachers:
A Framework for Growth
Real Support That Leads to Student Success
New teachers typically assume the same responsibilities as veteran teachers yet receive little meaningful support. Most learn by trial and error, especially when they enter the profession through non-traditional pathways or with emergency certifications. This is not only a recipe for teacher burnout and attrition but an unfair situation for students.
With more than 360,000 teachers not fully certified and one in 10 new teachers having no student teaching experience, students can't afford for novice teachers to sink or swim. Instructionally-focused mentoring is a powerful way to change the pattern and provide the kind of instrumental and social support new teachers need to help students thrive.
A Proven Framework for Learning and Growth
Mentoring New Teachers: A Framework for Growth is a hands-on guide to creating a high-quality mentoring program that supports new teachers' practice, promotes veteran teachers' growth, and addresses students' needs. This book delivers practical tools and research-backed strategies that improve teaching and learning in ways traditional "buddy system" approaches do not.
Who it is for: Mentors, mentor supervisors, principals, district leaders, and everyone who supports new teachers.
Inside You'll Find:
- Step-by-step guidance to apply Learning Forward's mentor cycle, a process for diagnosing needs, providing coaching supports, and monitoring progress
- Specific strategies for building mentors' skills and competencies in six main areas: cultivating beliefs about learning, building relationships, communicating effectively, diagnosing mentee needs, providing coaching support, and monitoring progress
- Tools for navigating each step of the mentoring process, including partnership agreements, goal-setting frameworks, and observation protocols
- Real-world examples of impactful mentoring from Louisiana's statewide program, where 95% of participating mentors reported feeling prepared and confident to mentor resident and novice teachers
- Advice about how to navigate common challenges
Research Shows High-Quality Mentoring Works
A review of research on teacher mentoring and induction found that longer and more consistent mentoring programs result in higher teacher satisfaction, commitment, and retention, as well as improved instructional skills. Most importantly, these benefits for mentees translate into better outcomes for students.
Teachers with high-quality mentoring and induction supports tend to be more successful at classroom management and keeping students on task, developing lesson plans, using effective questioning techniques, and maintaining a positive classroom atmosphere.
An Investment That Multiplies Across Generations
It's important to remember the return on investing in a high-quality mentoring program: It impacts not just a small group of teachers and their current students, but generations of their students to come as well as future teachers to whom today's mentees will pass on their knowledge and skills. In other words, schools can't afford not to spend the time on establishing support for new teachers.
Read an Excerpt
Better than a buddy system: A framework for new teacher mentoring
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.
Praise for Mentoring New Teachers
"Mentoring New Teachers: A Framework for Growth is a book that is long overdue. When I read it, I wished I could go back and recommend it to my first mentor. With this book and its many practical tools, mentors can achieve their greatest aspiration: developing and sustaining a competent, confident, courageous, and compassionate education workforce. What you take away from the book and put into practice will strengthen both your mentoring and your program, ensuring that every new educator has the chance to succeed."
— Joellen Killion, Author, Coaching Matters and Taking the Lead: New Roles for Teachers and School-Based Coaches
"Mentoring New Teachers: A Framework for Growth deepens our understanding of the power of purposeful mentoring. Designed to support continuous improvement, it guides veteran educators to support new teachers in entering the profession as learners who are committed to strengthening their practice every day. It offers practical guidance for building effective mentoring relationships and highlights the important roles all educators play in shaping a thriving school culture."
— Steve Barkley, Chief Learning Officer, PLS 3rd Learning
About the Authors
Leslie Hirsh Ceballos is principal of an elementary school campus in Richardson Independent School District in Texas and a senior consultant with Learning Forward, where she has supported mentor academies across Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, and Guam.
Sharron Helmke is a senior vice president of professional services at Learning Forward. She holds a doctorate in transformational change for societal impact, and her published research focuses on shared leadership for instructional improvement.
Thomas Manning is an educational consultant and was previously a senior vice president of professional services for Learning Forward. He authored a chapter in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (3rd ed.) and has been published in the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership.
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Written for all educators involved in planning, implementing, and supervising mentoring for new teachers, this book can be used individually or as part of a school-wide mentoring program. It will show you the way to a culture of learning and growth for all — novice teachers, veteran educators, leaders, and students.
