| Novice special education teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers, contributing to the critical shortage of special educators faced by school districts across the nation. Many are leaving before completing five years in the classroom creating vacancies that are increasingly difficult to fill. College and alternative teacher preparation programs are unable to graduate enough new teachers to meet the demand created by these critical vacancies. School districts must face the challenge and identify successful strategies for retaining novice teachers once they have been employed by a district. Effective district mentoring programs have achieved up to an 80% success rate in the retention of new teachers in their first five years in the classroom (National Association of State Directors of Special Education, 2007, as cited in Butler, Desperately Seeking Special Education Teachers, 2008). Ensuring quality mentor to mentee match can be critical in this success. The purpose of this qualitative, comparative case study was to investigate how novice special education teachers perceived their level of satisfaction and support from same subject mentors compared to those that had mentors from different subject matters and what influence this had on their projection to remain in the field of special education within five years. This study focused on four novice special education teachers in their first semester of teaching; two teachers were assigned special education mentors and two were assigned general education mentors. Data were collected through reflective journals and one-on-one interviews; these sources were utilized as evidence to suggest that the assignment of same subject mentors can have a direct impact on the novice special educators perceived level of support and satisfaction. Novice teachers without special education mentors validated the importance of this concept by identifying informal mentors who were special educators. Recommendations developed from this study give districts ideas that can be utilized to develop or improve mentor programs and provide support to enhance the experiences of their novice teachers. These recommendations may have a positive impact on novice special education teacher experiences, increase the retention of these critical staff members, and provide stability to programs of children with special needs. |
