DescriptionNovices are often unprepared to meet the demanding teaching career that awaits them after they graduate college. Therefore, school districts need supports in place to help them succeed, and mentoring is one way these teachers can receive that guidance and assistance during their first year. Mentoring is a formal relationship between a novice and a veteran teacher, which is established to provide the novice teacher with various kinds of support; it is a substantial aspect of a systematic induction process (Washburn-Moses, 2010). The New Jersey Department of Education requires all novice teachers to be matched upon hire with a selected mentor, who has been trained to fulfill this role. Although mentoring is required by the state of New Jersey, the way in which each district enacts this mandate contributes to considerable variability in the quality of support the novice teacher receives. The Loop District, the site of this study, is one example of a district that employs mentoring but may not be reaping all its benefits because it does not have a systematic, research-based approach. The purpose of this study was to implement a research-based mentoring program in the Loop School District and document what happened in order to inform future practice. All matched mentors and novices teaching at School Three during the 2012-2013 school year participated by offering their perspectives on the research-based mentoring program and its new components, which provided a structure for meetings and classroom observations. Data was gathered through interviews, recordings of dyad meetings, document collection, and surveys. The data suggested that distributing protocols to be used during meetings was appreciated but they were underutilized. The observation component was helpful when classroom coverage and other coordination was provided for the teachers observing. Doing pre and post-observation conferences were reported to increase the benefits of observation. Findings pointed to the importance of professional development for mentors and novices to encourage more in depth and effective implementation of the components of the program.