ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a description of two teachers in their field experiences, student teaching, and first years of teaching in an urban setting. It examines the role of resilience in the teachers’ efforts to be successful in their urban schools. Resilience has often been associated with teacher self-efficacy and with teacher retention; that is, teachers who stay in teaching are those who feel competent and effective. Research on retention of new teachers coupled with research on the development of learning communities suggests that teachers who stay in teaching are often anchored by and with a community of practice that may have begun in their teacher education program. In teacher education programs, mutual multiple mentoring can be embedded in the program with a cohort design as well as in course work, in collaborative and cooperative learning, and in encouragement of mutual mentoring among candidates during their work in schools, in their field placements or in weekly seminar classes.
