Teachers join the profession hoping to inspire students, but their training does not fully prepare them for the realities of the classroom. What is more, the lifelines administrators provide to new hires are not always reliable. Most veteran teachers mandated by state or local officials to serve as mentors are not given time or money to provide more than a cursory orientation to their new peers. As such, most disillusioned teachers leave the profession within five years. In this article, the author describes a pilot program inaugurated by Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Teacher Leadership to help beginning teachers through the mentoring system.