Prioritizing support for early-career educators says teachers matter. Our students deserve nothing less. Supporting early-career educators is crucial to addressing the turnover crisis. But more importantly, it lays the foundation for a building the conditions for a profession where every educator grows in skill, leads from within, and shapes schools into places of academic rigor and joy.
We all know the first five years can make or break a teacher’s career. And it doesn’t end there. From new to experienced, from good to great — that how successful schools approach teacher development.
When systems are designed intentionally around this for strong starts and fulfilling careers, schools see:
Supportive working conditions, including collaboration and coaching, significantly improve teacher satisfaction and reduce turnover
Teachers who receive sustained, high-quality coaching improve their instructional practice more quickly than peers without such support to boost student achievement
Schools embracing leadership development tend to exhibit more resilient instructional quality and greater adaptability
Teacher empowerment — through autonomy, professional development, and leadership opportunities — consistently supports higher job satisfaction and reduces turnover
We help schools provide foundational, job-embedded support to develop new teacher talent, creating the conditions for teacher well-being and growth. Mentoring is the cornerstone of our work.
Teacher turnover is not going resolve itself. We need to design teacher induction for retention. It starts with understanding the conditions that need to be in place to welcome new teachers into the profession. What will make them stay in the face of a steep learning curve and heavy responsibility?
It’s everything — instructional alignment, leadership coherence, and whole-system design that puts early-career educators at the center of a workforce resilience and retention strategy that sticks.
Teachers today are coming to the classroom with highly varied preparation experiences. We need their talent and passion. So we need to commit early to their success.
Our strategy in action:
We help schools build structures where early-career teachers plan, reflect, and solve problems in partnership with colleagues as part of the job.
Teaching is intellectually and emotionally demanding. We support schools to provide professional support that includes wellness tools, reflection time, and relational check-ins to sustain teachers’ energy, purpose and growth.
We support mentors and coaches in helping new teachers translate complex content into meaningful, accessible instruction.
We ensure new teachers receive mentoring that’s sustained, aligned to instructional goals, and embedded across multiple systems and roles.
Our model prioritizes learning over compliance, with frequent, formative and strengths-based feedback that’s specific and goal-aligned.
We help new teachers create classrooms where students feel safe and supported to engage in challenges, independent and collaborative learning, and critical thinking.
As new teachers deepen their practice, schools need to continue to invest thoughtfully or risk losing promising educators just as they’re hitting their stride. This is when confidence, instructional self-efficacy, and resilience are forged or lost.
Our strategy in action:
Our approach addresses common misconceptions, learning progressions, and the developmental steps students take to master academic content.
We ensure that consistent, formative instructional coaching is built into everyday, job-embedded practices to promote confidence and accelerate effective practice.
We focus on the foundational moves of great teaching — checking for understanding, facilitating discussion, and responding to student thinking — and support teachers to refine instruction through cycles of observation and feedback.
Without clear career development pathways and leadership opportunities, even committed, talented teachers may disengage.
Our strategy in action:
We design professional learning that clearly defines what’s possible and support teachers in reaching for what’s next.
We support school and district leaders to recognize and provide opportunities for teacher-leadership, retaining talent while growing internal capacity.
We work hard to ensure mentors, coaches, and school leaders are part of a coherent instructional system that supports the continued growth of educators at every career stage, especially those first five years.
