Smart Leadership Strategies That Retain New Teachers

In the 1967 film To Sir With Love, Sidney Poitier plays a promising, young teacher at a troubled high school in London: apathetic colleagues, a derelict building, students more interested in smoking cigarettes than learning. Then he befriends a teacher who shares his dedication to the work, has an epiphany, and changes his whole approach in the classroom. At the end of the film, he rejects a job offer at a well-resourced school: He’d found his purpose, and that was to stay exactly where he was.

It’s a beautiful film with a powerful message, but in the end, it’s pure Hollywood. The reality is that new teachers quit their jobs in droves. According to a 2025 survey by the Center for American Progress, approximately 45 percent of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years, and in the 2024-25 school year, 50 percent of school leaders felt their school was understaffed.

This degree of staff turnover causes a cascade of challenges in the school ecosystem, disrupting continuity and generating “instructional, financial, and organizational costs for districts and schools that can negatively affect student learning and other educational outcomes,” note researchers Jason Miller and Kimberly Evert in a 2025 study published by Elementary School Journal.

While compensation and work-life balance are critical in determining teachers’ job satisfaction, Miller and Evert suggest that organizational fit—put simply, school culture—plays an enormous role in whether new teachers remain in the profession. When novice teachers work in schools where leaders “promote frequent interactions among faculty members” for example, and develop “shared responsibility among teachers for all students,” they’ll find greater satisfaction in the job. In turn, when administrators demonstrate that they “value their teachers and center student learning in their actions and the school vision,” new teacher turnover tends to be lower, Miller and Evert write. 

Here are five strategies for building school cultures that are supportive and fulfilling environments for new teachers. 

Prioritize Strong Mentorship: Welcoming new teachers into an environment designed to support them is critical, and a strong mentoring component can make a meaningful difference. “Novice teachers have identified mentors as one of the most significant sources of support in their first year,” Miller and Evert write. “[They] often report reduced feelings of isolation, increased confidence, and improved instructional practices.”

To make mentorships convenient and sustainable, Kara Loftin, a school leader based in Atlanta, recommends pairing novice teachers with mentors whose classrooms are in close proximity, and who teach similar subjects. She suggests having them meet weekly for 45 minutes, at least for the new teacher’s first year at the school, giving the novice teacher a chance to learn and feel supported. 

Early-career teachers, a few years into the profession, can also serve as excellent guides for novices, notes middle-school teacher and author Heather Wolpert-Gawron. “Mentorship doesn’t have to be based on seniority over another,” she writes. “It can also be about those who can help us rise in our practice and in our spirit. It isn’t all about content area and pedagogical expertise; it’s also about attitude and leadership.”

Build a Culture of Shared Purpose: Like Sidney Poitier’s character in To Sir With Love, teachers benefit enormously from feeling like they’re part of a joint effort to help their students. “Teachers who perceive lower levels of collective responsibility are more likely to leave their schools,” Miller and Evert write. 

To create a culture of shared responsibility, new teachers need low-stakes opportunities built into the schoolday, when scheduling permits. Consider organizing monthly or bimonthly lunches for new teachers, giving them opportunities to “get together and talk with each other about the struggles—and joys—they’re experiencing,” writes leadership coach Elena Aguilar. This type of casual social event, she adds, helps normalize what they’re experiencing and may even provide gentle coaching—not as professional development or anything formal, but by creating space where they can bond and form a sense of community.

Keep Feedback Targeted and Productive: Short, frequent observations with real-time evaluations can encourage discussions focused on helping new teachers succeed, write veteran K-12 administrators Mark Wise and Barbara Soares Gould. They refer to such evaluations as a “GPS” for teachers, providing clear guidance and offering targeted instructional adjustments in those often rocky first months and years. 

By emphasizing evidence of new teachers’ progress over more traditional “scoring metrics,” Wise and Gould note, school leaders can foster a collaborative, next-steps mindset. By contrast, poorly calibrated, vague, or punitive teacher feedback can be demoralizing for new teachers. Taking a more constructive approach, the authors note, has allowed them to “empower teachers to make changes that improve their practice and strengthen the working relationships that help teachers take risks, ask for help, and feel supported as they grow.”

Protect Teacher Time: Every teacher knows that grading, lesson planning, and administrative tasks rarely stop at the last bell. But when school leaders prioritize protecting teacher planning hours, establish clear communication boundaries (not requiring responses to after-hours emails, for example), and audit busywork, teachers benefit greatly. 

According to a 2024 study by Pew Research Center, 84% of teachers do not feel they have adequate time for non-instructional job-related tasks during the work day. For new teachers getting accustomed to the demands of the job, this feeling is even more acute. School leaders can help ease the burden by scheduling time for teachers to get ahead of lesson planning and work with colleagues to discuss instruction, share strategies for supporting students, and collectively solve challenges, according to a report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. These types of regular interactions “strengthen the professional community and support teacher well‑being, and they are associated with positive student outcomes,” the report says. 

Have Your Teachers’ Backs: Many new teachers enter the classroom unprepared to handle conflict between students, disciplinary issues, and difficult conversations with families and caregivers. Highly effective principals know it’s their job to help teachers—especially new ones—navigate these moments. “The fastest way to lose a strong teacher is to send a difficult student back to their room with no support and a smile,” writes Danny Bauer, a former school administrator and founder of the website Better Leaders, Better Schools. 

Helping a teacher, meanwhile, can be as simple as offering to review an email to a parent, or to sit in on a meeting with a student. Ryan Daniel, principal of Fort Foote Elementary School in Maryland, says she has even drafted emails on behalf of her teachers, and teachers know they can BCC her on sensitive emails to keep her in the loop. Good leadership, in other words, sometimes just means ensuring teachers know they’re not alone.