Kathleen Martin and fellow mentor Deborah Lee get things set up at Pueblo High School for a two-day orientation for new teachers.

Benjie Sanders / arizona daily star

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Deborah Lee remembers what it was like her first year of teaching.

"I would leave at lunch, drive around the neighborhood and have a debate with myself about whether I was going back," she said.

Lee made it back every day and ultimately taught elementary- and middle-school language arts for 18 years.

Too many teachers, however, don't come back, with national figures showing 50 percent walk away from the profession within five years.

Tucson Unified School District is trying to change that statistic by helping first-year teachers have a better experience and more support.

Last year, TUSD received seed money to put five full-time mentors in high-poverty schools. It went so well that officials are working this year to assign a mentor to every first-year TUSD teacher, with a goal of having a few hours of face-to-face time each week.

The program has hired 21 mentors, each responsible for about 15 teachers, and a program coordinator.

"There's an old joke that a new teacher walks into a classroom, is given keys and books and told 'go,' " said Kathleen Martin, who spent 29 years in the classroom before joining Lee as a mentor last year. "Other professions don't do that."

That's essentially what happened with Michelle Tozer, a 39-year-old science teacher at Hohokam Middle School.

Tozer is teaching in conjunction with taking classes to become certified and never had the mentor relationship that can develop during student teaching. The most recent education experience she'd had was with college professors, who have a lot of information but tend to gravitate to the orate-and-lecture style of imparting it.

"I'd notice my students were starting to drift while I was teaching, but I didn't know how to make it better," Tozer said. "I didn't know any other strategy other than just to keep talking to them."

Martin came in and immediately started working with her to spice up her lessons. Tozer said her disciplinary problems dropped. Her lesson planning took more time but the classes popped. And when an activity didn't work, she learned some ways to change in midcourse.

"My instruction completely changed. If it hadn't been for this program, I would be starting this year a lot more apprehensively. Now, I'm excited about the chance to use all these new ideas."

Sometimes new teachers are lucky to get books. They don't know where to make copies. They struggle with curriculum, with what to teach and how to get the kids involved and how to get Johnny to stop talking to his buddy in the back row.

What's worse, said program coordinator Melissa Peterson, new teachers are often at the bottom of the pecking order within a school, while more veteran teachers work their way up to more advanced classes.

"First-year teachers are often not treated well. They get heavier class loads with more preps," she said. "We need instead to make sure they feel valued and supported. If they're successful, our kids are successful."

TUSD employs about 3,500 teachers. With a few weeks left until the start of school, there are still roughly 125 vacancies, mostly in special education, math and science. Peterson said district officials believe the program, along with TUSD's competitive salary schedule and the fact the program offers participating teachers a stipend of $1,000, will go on the "plus" side of the margin as new prospects consider where to teach.

Then they just have to get them to stay.

Martin, who worked with 16 middle school teachers last year, said one of her teachers told her she planned to quit halfway through the year, in December. The kids were bored and acting up. Martin demonstrated some techniques, did some cooperative teaching, helped with troubleshooting.

"She's coming back," Martin said. "Not only is she coming back, but she's excited about coming back because now she has a new year to start over and she has a good idea of where to start."

A November 2007 survey of 32,000 Arizona teachers suggests a lack of mentoring might be partly to blame for the attrition rate of new teachers. The study, sponsored by the Arizona Education Association, found novice teachers often reported they weren't given mentors, were mentored by other inexperienced teachers or were being mentored by veterans who had heavy workloads already and didn't have time for them.

There are plenty of mentoring models in the education system. Student teachers get feedback and assessment from mentors. Instructional coaches, now largely restricted to poorly performing schools, often are deployed into classrooms to evaluate teachers and help with strategies. Sometimes, new teachers are assigned to more veteran colleagues.

But there are limits to some of those models. Many have an evaluation component that can make teachers feel as if they're being graded. Mentor teachers sometimes are already overwhelmed with their own classes and don't have as much time for others. And, often, new teachers are uncomfortable about sharing when they're having problems, fearful it will get back to administration or make them look ineffective to peers.

In TUSD's program, the mentors are dedicated full-time to their assignments. And everything that happens between them is confidential.

Steve Courter, president of the Tucson Education Association and an elementary-school teacher himself, remembers one year when he would walk past a new teacher's room and hear overly enthusiastic student conversations filtering through the door. Every time he asked how she was doing, she chirped that everything was fine. Until one day she collapsed into tears.

The veteran teachers banded together to take some of her more difficult pupils and helped her with lesson materials.

"The important thing to take away from that is that teachers really have to help each other and be open to asking for help," he said.

"When you first start teaching, it's a very lonely experience and you're always feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. It's good to have some support."

Coverage of TUSD's Tuesday night Governing Board meeting. Page B1