Mentoring programs are not new. Veteran teachers are often paired with new teachers in order to help launch successful teaching careers. This was not the case when I first started teaching. I started my first year in a third grade classroom in a tough neighborhood school. Most of my students had been retained for at least two years and were reading on a first grade level. No one offered to help me. It never occurred to me to even ask for help. Years later, I served as a mentor to several beginning teachers. Although I enjoyed the experiences, there was very little time for me to get together with them. We were always overloaded with work.
New teachers also have a lot to offer veteran teachers. Fresh out of school, those just starting to teach have some great ideas, and their enthusiasm can be contagious. There is nothing better than having a helpful friend at school. I found it most beneficial to relate to other teachers teaching the same subject or sharing the same students.
All of this is leading up to a renewed interest in mentoring programs due to the fact that researchers "estimate as many as 50 percent of teachers nationwide will leave the profession within their first five years on the job, fed up and frustrated." In order to slow down this mass exodus, a report on CNN.com tells of funds possibly being provided for retaining new teachers.
States from Oregon to Georgia are considering pouring millions of dollars into mentoring programs for new teachers, aiming to stop educators from spending just a few years in the classroom before leaving the field.
The surge of interest in such programs stems largely from a broad experiment with mentoring in California. In the 1990s, California tried a new retention program after losing about 50 percent of its new teachers every year.
Liam Goldrick, director of policy for the New Teacher Center, based at the University of California in Santa Cruz, said the program is now in place in every school district in the state and the retention rate has risen to about 84 percent.
In order for mentoring programs to be successful, teachers must have time to work together. One idea might be to hire experienced teachers to be full time mentors. Instead of having students of their own, they could be there to help at any time. This would include helping out with materials, instruction, and parent contacts. If they had any spare time, they could even offer their help to veteran teachers. This might be a rotating position where teachers could be out of the classroom for a year and work as a mentor. Any mentoring program should be nurturing and stress free for the teachers involved.