New teacher attrition rates represent one of the largest operating costs for school districts. What may be the most significant problem concerning the profession"s dismal new teacher retention rates is that it seriously impacts the education of students. Studies have shown that when students have a new teacher three times, altogether they lose up to a year of schooling. This study looks at the estimated numbers of new teachers who leave the profession within the first few years of teaching and does so not only for general education teachers in core curricula courses but also examines how the attrition rates of new career & technical instructors compare. Most importantly, this study looks at how the supervisory styles of principals can be seen as one of the largest contributing factors to new teacher dissatisfaction, and conversely, one of the strongest influencing factors for retaining new talent in the classroom. Concerns around teacher retention with the external contexts and challenges of COVID-19 are also raised.

Social science teachers play a crucial role in shaping students' understanding of the world and their place within it. They not only impart knowledge but also help students develop critical thinking skills, empathy, and a sense of civic responsibility.  Passionate teaching and learning are critical elements of effective education. This paper examines the impact of passionate teaching on teacher retention and wellness, as well as student learning, achievement, and well-being. Passionate teachers are defined by their enthusiasm, engagement, creativity, commitment, and flexibility, and have a positive impact on student motivation and engagement. On the other hand, passionate learners exhibit persistence, creativity, and autonomy in their learning journey. The paper also discusses strategies for increasing teacher passion for teaching, including professional development and a supportive school culture, and fostering student passion for learning, including a positive and engaging learning environment and opportunities for autonomy. The results of this study suggest that enhancing both teacher and student passion has a positive impact on teacher retention, teacher well-being, student achievement, and student well-being.

In our contemporary world, people of all ages are coding and almost everyone needs general and specific expert technology help from time to time. Software developers as technology experts are a unique ethnographic community that exhibit particular cultural traits, and who work together according to a previously unwritten yet specific set of rules and practices (Wellman & Gulia, 2018). This ethnographic qualitative study examines how experienced members of a small online software development community react and learn through help-seeking questions of newer members who need support in understanding the idiosyncrasies of a particular software development language (Bosch & D'Mello, 2017). This research analyzes the communications between askers and helpers, seeking to discover why the requests for some coding advice goes unanswered, why other new users receive less-than-satisfactory answers, and still yet why certain new members receive beneficial to highly useful assistance and information regarding their requests (Schueller, Tomasino, & Mohr, 2017). Study implications potentially extend to many domestic and worldwide online learning communities and help create a research to practice foundational knowledge of the best practices for asking for online help in order to receive maximum assistance from the most experienced members of various online help forums.

The virtual world Second Life (SL) can be part of professional development deployment and mentoring using online learning. This chapter provides a portrait of professional development and teaching in SL. While SL requires a more extensive learning curve than might be expected, the virtual campus becomes a functioning instructional site for all disciplines, supplementing personal and text-based asynchronous learning in various other platforms with synchronous voice and text, enhancing the interactions in virtual professional development settings. In addition to regular face-to-face professional development meetings, the virtual campus allows faculty and staff to meet for professional development, mentoring, discussion groups, committees, and virtual academic conferences. Key ideas for operating educational sites in SL include training prospective faculty, staff, and instructors, mentoring, dealing with appropriate presentations of self as avatar, tracking activities and behaviors in SL, choosing modes of communication, and moving from lecture to discussion to immersive learning in media rich constructed spaces.

The virtual world Second Life (SL) can be part of professional development deployment and mentoring using online learning. This chapter provides a portrait of professional development and teaching in SL. While SL requires a more extensive learning curve than might be expected, the virtual campus becomes a functioning instructional site for all disciplines, supplementing personal and text-based asynchronous learning in various other platforms with synchronous voice and text, enhancing the interactions in virtual professional development settings. In addition to regular face-to-face professional development meetings, the virtual campus allows faculty and staff to meet for professional development, mentoring, discussion groups, committees, and virtual academic conferences. Key ideas for operating educational sites in SL include training prospective faculty, staff, and instructors, mentoring, dealing with appropriate presentations of self as avatar, tracking activities and behaviors in SL, choosing modes of communication, and moving from lecture to discussion to immersive learning in media rich constructed spaces.