BOOSTing new teacher success

Teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate. As a result, students, the teachers who remain, and school leadership must deal with a shortage of long-term institutional knowledge, underexperienced teachers taking over classrooms during the school year, and decreases in student achievement (Black, Neel, & Benson, 2007; Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2019; Castro, 2025; Grissmer et al., 2000; Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2014; Menzie, 2023).

As teacher educators and researchers from three different teacher preparation programs, we launched a longitudinal study to examine how beginning teachers experienced support in their early years in the classroom and how those experiences shaped their career paths. To do so, we followed a group of future teachers from their student-teaching placements through the first five years of their teaching careers. Over time, many shared concerns about the lack of consistent mentoring and induction support (Sydnor, Davis, Daley, 2024). By the fifth year, 20% had left the profession, and only one-third were still in their original teaching roles (Davis, Snydor, & Daley, in press).

This study followed nine novice elementary teachers who graduated from three teacher preparation programs in two Midwestern states. Participants have taken part in annual in-depth interviews since spring 2020, with the most recent conducted in 2025. As beginning teachers shared their experiences, certain words and phrases surfaced repeatedly: burnout, overwhelmed, scared, isolated, and seeking validation. Two of our participants described their first two years in vivid metaphors, like being on a sinking ship and a lighthouse with no light. These weren’t just passing complaints; they were honest reflections of a system falling short.