Among the many challenges facing rural administrators, recruiting and retaining teachers is often at the top of the list. Given the time and energy they must invest to successfully attract, recruit, and hire a new teacher, there is a significant need to adopt strategies that will help to retain those new teachers. Rural administrators can support…

Racially and ethnically minoritized students are now the majority in U.S. public schools. This demographic change, along with heightened attention to racial injustice and evidence regarding the importance of Black teachers, has renewed a decades-old push to increase their numbers. Redesigning teacher education and development to support the…

New teachers benefit from mentoring from more experienced colleagues, and the Wyoming Teacher Mentor Corps (WTMC) provides high-quality training for master teachers to provide this mentoring support. As part of the program, mentors learn about assessment, communication, feedback, and work-life balance. Colby Gull and Leslie Rush describe how, as…

Despite training in phonics and phonemic awareness during literacy methods courses, preservice teachers indicate having a limited understanding of how to apply these two critical components of reading in their own classrooms. As preservice teachers enter the classroom, they will need support from principals, literacy professionals, and colleagues…

The high performance of Japanese students, as demonstrated on international tests, is well-known, but the professional learning of Japanese teachers has received less attention. Ruth Ahn, Yasuko Shimojima, Hisayoshi Mori, and Shigeru Asanuma describe the professional development requirements for teachers across their careers. Novice teachers are…

A great deal of teacher planning involves an invisible process of envisioning how plans might unfold in the classroom. Novice teachers can benefit from seeing how experienced teachers work through this process, but, too often, co-planning sessions between mentors and novices focus on selecting activities to fill out a lesson, rather than delving…

Formal mentoring is the cornerstone of most teacher induction programs, but teachers receive support from informal mentors as well. The authors report on findings from a study of 57 first-year mathematics teachers in 11 school districts to describe who teachers' formal and informal mentors are, how teachers work with them, and how the functions of…

At the heart of the plans and programs that launched Singapore's rise to the top of international education comparisons are the tiny nation-state's commitments to its teaching force beginning with its highly competitive selection process and carrying through its teacher training, its career-long professional development, and even an enhanced…

Drawing on nationally representative data from the 1988 to 2018 school years, the authors provide an overview of some of the key changes in the characteristics of first-year teachers in the U.S., including racial/ethnic identity, education levels, subject area, and certification status. The data also show that new teachers have become increasingly…

There is a long-held but inaccurate belief that new teachers' expertise and talent is mostly innate and that it peaks and plateaus within their first few years of teaching. William Slotnik and Bryan Goodwin explain that school systems need to abandon this conventional wisdom and instead build true talent development systems that support the…

Research has established that teacher-mentoring programs can have a beneficial effect on new-teacher performance and retention. However, too often, mentoring programs don't live up to their potential. This article presents four research-based strategies that improve mentoring programs' prospects for success. By setting clear expectations, getting…

A close look at one professional's career change into teaching illustrates unique challenges and qualities, showing in stark relief what makes the induction smoother and the experience more successful. This article presents the story of a novice career changer teacher that illustrates their unique problems and dispositions, as well as…

Induction support programs for beginning teachers is an education reform whose time has come. The national data indicate that over the past couple of decades the number of beginning teachers has ballooned in the U.S. Simultaneously, there has been a large increase in the number of states, districts, and schools offering induction programs.…

A teacher educator and a former student, now a classroom teacher, have a 14-year conversation about the deep dynamics of classroom management, which is more complicated than it first appears. The teacher educator introduces the classroom teacher to The Deal, an idea that can guide early-career teachers as well as veteran teachers. The Deal is, in…

Classroom management is the greatest challenge for beginning teachers and continues to develop over their careers. Much can be learned from beginning teachers through reflection and the perspective that experience brings. Seven strategies can help improve classroom management: Maintain a growth mindset; try new ideas, reflect, then accept, reject,…