A Continuum of Care: School Librarian Interventions for New Teacher Resilience

School librarians occupy a unique position to offer supports for first year teachers to build resilience, reduce burnout, and ensure retention. The researcher used the psychology theory of resilience to develop the Continuum of Care model which initiates in mentoring and moves toward a collaborative partnership. Fifteen school librarians in one urban district recruited 26 new teachers in their schools to form the treatment group. All new teachers in the district were surveyed to establish their initial level of resilience and collect demographics. A comparison group of 26 new teachers were matched by scores on a resilience scale at the start of the school year, by school level and by Title I status of the school. The treatment group received interventions using the Continuum of Care model over the course of the following four months. Post-treatment, the comparison group and treatment group were surveyed for level of resilience, burnout, and retention. ANOVA was used to find change in resilience over time for the treatment group. ANCOVA was used to compare resilience and burnout scores for the comparison and treatment groups. Binary logistic regression was used to compare retention of the comparison and treatment groups. Interviews of three school librarian-new teacher pairs brought forth the lived experiences of participants. Findings show that new teachers in the treatment group received significantly higher levels of mentoring and collaboration than new teachers in the comparison group. There was a significant effect for the interaction between level of resilience for the treatment group and age. School librarians and new teachers valued their relationship and voiced the effect on resilience, burnout, and retention. Reaching out to new teachers to bridge the gap between the library and classroom may be considered as best practice for school librarians. This exploratory research study laid the groundwork for further study of the role of the school librarian to support new teacher resilience in the authentic school setting