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Educators at a public high school in Southeastern United States depend on mentor teachers to minimize the attrition rate among beginning teachers, yet the strategies implemented by mentors lack definition and clarity. The purpose of this study was to explore mentor teachers' perceptions of effective mentoring strategies and their needs when mentoring new teachers. Maslow's humanistic learning theory guided this bounded basic qualitative study. The research questions focused on the mentoring strategies mentor teachers perceived as effective and the needs of the mentors. Ten high school mentor teachers, who currently mentor new teachers, were purposefully selected to participate in individual and focus group interviews. Precoding, open and axial coding were used to inductively analyze the data. The results showed mentors promote school culture, are a source of information, build relationships, use data to drive discussion, provide opportunity for reflection, conduct observations, connect theory with practice, and model professional behavior as effective strategies. Mentor teachers indicated that effective communication is crucial when mentoring new teachers. Additionally, they need specific skills to help beginning teachers better understand the reality of teaching and address their unrealistic expectations of the profession. Based on the findings a 3-day professional development for mentor teachers was developed to address mentors' needs. This endeavor may contribute to positive social change when district administration provides mentor teachers with professional development to enrich their mentoring strategies which in turn may address the challenges new teachers experience and reduce the attrition rate.

The decline in teacher retention is a growing problem in the 21st century. Beginning teacher turnover rates have grown by 50% over the past decade, with the national rate increasing to over 20%. Beginning teachers entering the profession are leaving within their first 3 years, with half leaving the profession in the first 5 years. To meet their growing needs, districts and states spend billions of dollars to recruit, hire, and try to retain new teachers. The purpose of this case study was to examine beginning teachers' perceptions of their teacher mentoring program located in an urban school district. Bandura's social cognitive theory, socio-cultural theory, and Knowles's adult learning theory were used to frame this investigation. The research questions examined the extent to which beginning teachers perceived their current mentoring program's strengths and weaknesses, the mentoring strategies used, and the improvements that could be made to the program. Interview data and transcripts from 10 beginning teachers were examined through coding that established common themes among teacher perceptions. The results revealed the importance of having a mentor and the need for more structure, more collaboration, and more support in the program. The findings from this study were used to create a 3-day workshop that includes the identified themes. Implications for positive social change include strengthening mentoring programs through professional development with more attention to structure, collaboration, and support to help transition beginning teachers into the teaching profession so that they remain.