Keywords
Teacher Mentorship, Induction, Teaching Stages
Abstract
The high attrition rates of teachers in the initial phases of their career is a well-documented problem that school districts around the United States have been grappling with for decades with limited success (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2019; Ingersoll, 2003). The COVID pandemic has also increased the attrition of experienced teachers with 55% of teachers reporting that they are more likely to leave the profession before reaching retirement age than they were before the pandemic (Jotkoff, 2022). Mentorship programs that place new teachers with experienced teachers is one solution that school districts in one state have implemented to increase early career retention. Current models of teacher mentorship have had minimal success in reducing new teacher attrition and increased attrition by experienced educators is leading to a loss of institutional wisdom. In order to stem the rising tide of teacher attrition, it is necessary that we expand our supports for new teachers and learn from informal teacher mentorship relationships that have emerged organically in our schools.
DOI
10.15760/nwjte.2023.18.1.1
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40377
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Steve W.
(2023)
"“Who is Here to Help?” Exploring Informal Teacher Mentorship: A Call for Study,"
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education: Vol. 18
:
Iss.
1
, Article 1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15760/nwjte.2023.18.1.1