Mentoring the New Professional in Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education

By statutory mandate, all of Kentucky's first-year interdisciplinary early childhood educators receive support and assistance from a team of resource teachers, principals, and teacher educators through a year-long supervised internship. This program supports new teachers as they form their professional identities and allows mentors to sharpen their analytical skills as they examine specific curricular and professional issues with their new colleagues. Programs like Kentucky's internship program have the potential to reduce the current rate of attrition for early childhood special educators during the critical first years of their professional careers and to support their competence and confidence throughout their professional lives. This article describes Kentucky's program and identifies challenges in its implementation and empirical validation as a case example.