Mentoring the new professional in interdisciplinary early childhood education: The Kentucky Teacher Internship Program

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 professio nal identities and allows mentors to sharpen their analytical skills as the y examine specific curricular and professional issues with their new collea gues. Programs like Kentucky's internship program have the potential to red uce the current rate of attrition for early childhood special educators dur ing the critical first years of their professional careers and to support t heir competence and confidence throughout their professional lives. This ar ticle describes Kentucky's program and identifies challenges in its impleme ntation and empirical validation as a case example.