Belonging Starts Early: Rethinking Mentorship for Gen Z Teachers
by Nate Eklund
If you visit any school in near the beginning of the fall semseter, you can usually spot the newest teachers pretty quickly. They move through the building with a kind of hopeful apprehension, trying to figure out not just their job, but the culture they’ve stepped into. For a lot of early-career teachers, especially those from Gen Z, that transition is the hardest part. It is not about being an A+ rockstar teacher on day one. It’s about giving them a place of belonging from the very beginning.
Last summer, I had the privilege to speak with my good friend Darrin Peppard on his Leaning into Leadership podcast. We talked about this exact thing. In education, you will have five generations of adults working in the same building, each with different expectations for how school should run and what work should feel like. And those gaps show up real quick for new educators.
I told a story from my first year of teaching. I was twenty-two, and I wore a pair of open-toed Birkenstocks to school. It never crossed my mind that it might be a problem. During passing time, the veteran teacher next door walked over, handed me one of the mints he always carried, and said, “Are those the shoes you’re wearing today, Nate?” That was the entire conversation. Needless to say, I never wore those Birkenstocks ever again…to school. Granted, that situation wasn’t about the teacher dress code, necessarily. It was about the unwritten rules that help a school function.
You do not learn those rules in orientation packets. You learn them from people. And when turnover is high, those small but essential points of connection start disappearing. The new teachers lose out, but so do the veterans. You work with someone for a few years, you invest in them, and then they leave before they ever get to feel steady. It wears on morale in ways we rarely talk about.
In high turnover organizations, there can often be a certain degree of guardedness in how staff form relationships. The reality is teachers tend to be the kind of people who you want in your life: strong, funny, smart, and committed to creating a better world. Who doesn’t want more of THAT person in their life and work? That’s why when we lose our educators too early in their careers we’re not just jeopardizing the success of our students, we’re also eroding the social fabric of working in a school that makes the career so infinitely rewarding.
This is where belonging becomes more than a nice idea. It becomes a retention strategy. Research from Kappan and other national studies continues to show that mentoring and induction rank among the strongest predictors of whether early-career teachers stay. Not because mentors fix everything. But because mentorship shrinks the distance between confusion and confidence. It gives someone a place to ask the questions they can’t ask in a staff meeting. It gives them a voice in a place where they do not yet feel sure they have one.
Gen Z brings its own strengths to the classroom. They value collaboration. They look for clarity. They want feedback that helps them understand what matters most. They care deeply about the purpose behind their work. When schools build induction around those values, early-career teachers settle in with more stability. However, if schools ignore those values, the young teachers start to wonder whether they were ever supposed to fit in at all. And therein lies the issue.
In the districts we support, the needs are remarkably consistent. New teachers want to know how decisions are made and who they can go to when they hit a snag. They want someone to explain the things that “everyone knows” but nobody says out loud. They want feedback that helps them grow, not feedback that makes them feel like they’re on trial. And they want to believe they can still be themselves while learning the craft.
Mentorship is not a side project. It is a structure that protects people. A thoughtful mentor can help a new teacher understand which expectations are flexible and which expectations really hold the place together. They can answer the late-night questions, walk someone through the tricky parent email, or help them think through the lesson they want to try but are scared to attempt. They help the person feel present in the building, not just placed in it.
There is a practical reason this matters for retention. We are not going to return to an era where teachers will consistently stay thirty years in one building. But we can help someone who might have left at year three stay until year seven. And that difference changes everything. Their skills get sharper, and their relationships deepen. Thus helping them to solidify an identity as an educator. They become part of the story of the place instead of someone who passed through it.
Hope grows in that space. You can feel it. And when new teachers feel hopeful, it does not just help them. It helps the entire school.
Induction does not need to be a complicated program. It needs to be intentional. A clear structure. A consistent mentor. A rhythm of conversation that invites reflection instead of fear. Belonging is not a luxury. It is stability. It is retention. And most of all, it is a signal to new teachers that they matter from the moment they walk in the door.
We invite you to take a closer look at the experience your new teachers are having. What would it take for them to feel supported, connected, and steady in their first years?
