Chapter 9: Increasing Wellbeing and Resilience in new Teachers through University-Based Mentoring

For decades, researchers (Fantilli & McDougall, 2009; Hong, 2012) have highlighted the challenges faced by new teachers, like Grace, during their first years in the classroom. Few receive the support they need, as up to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). In general, beginning teachers report feeling underprepared, overwhelmed, and unsupported when faced with new challenges, which leads to frustration, stress and burnout after only a few years in the classroom (Kent et al., 2009).

While evidence suggests that induction mentoring can benefit these teachers, concerns have been raised about the content and characteristics of current programs (Goldrick et al., 2012; Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). Towards this end, faculty and staff at Hope College created and implemented a new model for university-based induction support, extending the mentoring relationship of pre-service teachers with their college supervisors into the first year of teaching. This induction model aims to help beginning teachers develop the types of resilience and capacity that will support their competence and wellbeing and ultimately assist in teacher retention.