A High Impact Practice that Works: Connecting Mentors From the Professional Community to Teacher Education Students

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.