Teacher candidates, while completing their student teaching internship, are part of an important teaching-and-learning triad. The other members of the triad, mentor teachers and university field instructors, provide essential support to teacher candidates throughout the student teaching internship experience (Yee, 1968). Recent research has examined the roles of mentor teachers and university field instructors. Not as much is understood, however, about the moments or experiences teacher candidates recognize as when they learned the most about teaching. With retirements increasing and as much as 50% leaving the field within the first five years of teaching (Shwartz & Dori, 2016), there is an urgency in studying, and hopefully improving, novice teacher support systems. In this dissertation, I explore the moments or experiences teacher candidates recognize as insightful and valuable from their student teaching experience, from the perspective of four recent student teachers. Using phenomenology as a method of inquiry (Giorgi, 1985), data were collected through phenomenological interviews of four teacher candidates after they completed a year-long student teaching internship. These interviews tell the story of teacher candidates becoming through learning (Hodkinson et al., 2008). Findings indicate that framing problems of practice within practical situations, situations that likely occur in an elementary classroom, positively influence teacher candidates' learning. The practice of adaptative mentoring (van Ginkel et al., 2015) provides opportunities for mentor teachers to support teacher candidates as they learn about teaching practice, while also helping them with emotional and practical concerns. Ultimately, I argue that grounding mentoring in both the how and why of teaching, along with adapting to the individual needs of teacher candidates, provides supportive opportunities for teacher candidates' learning.
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