A Meaningful Mentorship Model: Maine New Teacher Academy Aims to Address Rural Teacher Retention

In remote western Maine, like so many rural places, recruiting and retaining talented educators can be a challenge for small schools and districts. At the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), part of the University of Maine system, there is a renewed focus on ensuring that newly graduated teachers succeed and sustain in the classroom (The University of Maine anchors RSC’s New England Hub). Led by Dr. Patricia Williams, professor of early childhood education at UMF, a recent program called the New Teacher Academy has strengthened a vitally important component of retention: strong peer-peer mentorship.

While challenges with teacher recruitment and retention are not new, particularly to rural schools, Dr. Williams noticed that beginning in 2020 there was a sharp increase in educators being put into the classroom without a full foundation to succeed: “Some of this started during the pandemic, when I got a lot of calls from school districts saying ‘we need your students. We need them now. We need them for long-term subs. We need them out in the field’. And that puts a lot of pressure on teacher-ed programs to be producing teachers and sending them out into the field perhaps before they are really ready. And that made me really worried about the retention of teachers, particularly pre-service teachers, frankly.”

This factored into precipitously high rates of teachers leaving the classroom; data from the Maine Educational Policy Institute shows that Maine schools lose almost 30% of new teachers in their first three years. Due to the teacher shortage, emergency licenses were issued, enabling those without teaching degrees or backgrounds in education to enter classrooms. Dr. Williams describes the tension between wanting to meet the needs of schools and ensuring the long-term success of her students: “We want them to have experiences in the field, and I know how hard it is for rural school districts to recruit subs or teachers. However, I also worry about our students’ progression, and perhaps being put into a situation where they are challenged beyond what they are capable of at that point, and then we lose them in the pipeline.”

Utilizing a Maine Jobs and Recovery Grant from The University of Maine System, Dr. Williams put together a two-pronged approach to addressing retention. First, she focused on educator wellness and resilience. “We implemented four different sections of a resilience prevention program with our students. It was to really think about the kinds of challenges you have, trying to think about not just wellness in terms of your personal health, but also your mindset, and important skills and dispositions that you need to cultivate.” This became UMF Teachers Rising, which aimed to develop positive coping, resilience, and build up the grit needed to deal with the many challenges that come with teaching.

The second, and larger, component of the grant came in the form of the New Teacher Academy (NTA). Prior to the 2023-24 school year, Dr. Williams and her team at UMF formed a committee and assessed the state of mentorship in Maine’s schools. They found that “there wasn’t a lot of consistency across all the different districts about what mentoring or induction looked like. By state law each school is required to provide mentorship and induction support to new teachers, but what that looks like is a really wild walk. So it was a good opportunity to get into that space.” The committee compiled best practices, put together a model, and hired a long-time rural administrator, Dan Hart, to serve as a part-time director for the academy.

Next, they convened seven districts in western Maine to bring together new teachers, mentors, and district coordinators, for a total of nearly 130 participants. Working individually with each district, they led eight ‘enrichment sessions’ designed to build upon the existing mentorship skills within each district. This was important to Dr. Williams, who notes that “we developed the beginnings of a model that included a variety of enrichment sessions; Dan and I didn't want to call it ‘training,’ because we felt like it didn’t respect the many, many skills that mid-career teachers have as mentors. We wanted it to enrich what they were doing, and not assume that they had not cultivated their own strengths, skills, and beneficial approaches after years in the field; we wanted to be there to get to know them, their context, and needs for support and growth.”

In the lead up to and during the first year, they found that a lot of the district’s mentorship efforts centered on acclimating new teachers to their specific school, but that mentors did not have the capacity for focusing on bigger issues like educator wellness, stress management, special education supports, and communication skills. Some NTA sessions were done just with mentors or new teachers; others brought the pairs together for co-learning. Site visits, an end of year “Mentoring Moment” project, and a culminating celebration were also services offered. All told, relationship building was one of the positive outcomes, with many noting how important it was to grow their professional community with other teachers and to build community, camaraderie, and collegiality. To honor their time and work, teachers, mentors, and district coordinators all received a stipend.

For the 2024-25 school year, the New Teacher Academy grew to nine districts and about 150 participants; some returning teachers, but many new educators as well. The results speak for themselves; when compared with a control group, mentors and new teachers who participated in the NTA had 10% higher retention rates in their districts. For mentors, there was growth in guiding mentees in areas such as managing stress, strategies for working with parents/guardians, and techniques for working with diverse students. For new teachers, there was growth in their confidence in effective classroom management strategies, working with parents and guardians, using data and standards to plan instruction, assessment, and adapting instruction for learners and students with special needs.

Dr. Williams was particularly glad to see that the mentors felt rejuvenated, sharing that “oftentimes people can stagnate, especially in rural areas where there are not as many opportunities to climb the ladder or access professional development locally. Feeling like they had this additional piece under their belt, and their contributions were appreciated, did a lot for their confidence, engagement and view of their career.”

Unfortunately, the grant funding that supported the first two years of the New Teacher Academy sunsets in 2025, leaving the program’s future an open question. Dr. Williams is hoping to find ways to fund it going forward, knowing the major impact it has made in western Maine. Next year, she and her team are intending to try and offer a mentoring course for mid-career teacher mentors. Still, uncertainty around state and federal funding, combined with funders facing increased demand, do not guarantee that the program can continue indefinitely.

Still, Dr. Williams is encouraged by the significant mark that the intentional efforts to cultivate a culture of enhanced mentorship made in partner schools. “Districts have really enjoyed having us,” she reflected. Another potential future model could involve each district pitching in a small contribution to sustain the part-time director role, although Dr. Williams notes that the districts are also facing tight budgets. Whatever the future holds, the New Teacher Academy has worked to achieve its mission of helping emergent educators thrive as they step into the classroom, honing the skills of rejuvenated veteran teachers, and creating a replicable model of mentorship that could make a difference anywhere.

Rural Schools Collaborative would like to thank RSC New England Hub Lead Catherine Biddle of the University of Maine for connecting us with Dr. Patricia Williams at the University of Maine at Farmington.