In the majority of schools, a new teacher assumes essentially the same responsibilities as an experienced one. This puts the novice teacher -- and their students -- at a significant disadvantage. 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. As a result, novice teachers report learning by trial and error which can leave some talented novice teachers feeling ineffective and disconnected until they eventually leave the profession, adding to worrisome trends of teacher attrition. New teacher mentoring is a way to address that lack of support and boost teacher retention. Learning Forward developed an approach to mentoring shaped around a cycle of inquiry and support in which an experienced educator and a novice educator engage together. This approach is qualitatively different from the traditional "buddy system" approach to mentoring that is visible in many schools. Instead, it establishes mentoring as high-quality professional learning for new teachers, following a set of intentional steps to facilitate specific types of action, reflection, and improvement. These steps are framed as a cycle because they build on each other, and because mentors and mentees revisit them and repeat them multiple times as they work together over the course of a year or more. This early patterning then forms the basis of a new teacher's career-long practice of continuous inquiry and learning.