Mentoring with Impact

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Resources for Learning has been supporting beginning teachers since 1999 as the statewide coordinator for the Texas Beginning Educator Support System (TxBESS), which trained over 10,000 mentors in three years. After assisting other states with their mentoring programs and serving as an approved provider for the Beginning Teacher Induction and Mentoring (BTIM) program, RFL developed Scaffolded Solutions, which has supported beginning teachers in 66 districts.

These programs have demonstrated significant impact, including but not limited to:

  • TxBESS, which was offered only to high needs schools, was associated with stronger retention rates for high school teachers and minority teachers than for lower grades and Anglo teachers.

  • TxBESS mentor teachers report that serving as a mentor positively affects their professional growth.

  • Participating principals report that TxBESS and Scaffolded Solutions result in improved classroom performance of beginning teachers.

  • TxBESS and Scaffolded Solutions participants indicate high levels of satisfaction with TxBESS training.

  • BTIM participants returning to the same campus or district, the retention rate was 84.1% as compared to 69.9% on the same campuses in the prior school year.

  • In the Scaffolded Solutions activity log, 22 mentors and 22 beginning teachers in one district recorded a total of 973 records for a total of 1,899.5 hours of collaboration, or an average of 86.34 hours per mentor/beginning teacher pair. The top five activities types were:

    • 1—Lesson Planning (212 records)

    • 2—Attended Professional Development Together (160 records)

    • 3—Discussion (149 records)

    • 4—Action (long term) Planning (128 records)

    • 5—Other (118 records)

  • 87 percent (n=475) of Career and Technology Education (CTE) teachers in their first three years of their career had increased self-efficacy after mentoring as measured in May 2018, up from 81.5 percent in November of 2017.