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A high impact mentoring program at a community college connected professionals from the special education and early intervention fields with small groups of teacher education students. Two federal grants from U.S. Department of Education funded tuition scholarships and mentoring for 76 Special Education students and 78 Early Childhood Education/Early Intervention students in associate degree programs. The mentor programs consisted of individual monitoring by project staff, consistent contact with a mentor from the professional community and with other students in mentor groups, and structured monthly dinner meetings. Students who participated in the mentoring programs showed increased persistence and higher grade point average when compared with the general population of similar majors. Within each grant-funded population, students who showed low participation in the mentor programming presented lower retention rates and lower GPA than grant-funded students who took full advantage of the mentoring program.

Teacher education faculty need to bridge college course knowledge to actual practices in early childhood classrooms. Historically, faculty have lectured about best practices and then students have attempted to integrate these concepts into their own teaching with children. This article highlights one community college's use of digital photography to create a visual archive of student teachers’ exemplary environments, displays, curriculum materials, and learning experiences. The photographs are cataloged and formatted for PowerPoint presentations in college courses as well as in faculty development and recruitment opportunities. After discussing limitations in other pedagogical techniques, the article chronicles the thought processes involved in the creation of this unique teaching tool. The article details numerous benefits of utilizing digital photography for modeling best practices. The benefits include modeling the use of visual documentation for student teachers, exposing students to technology-based ...