School districts have struggled with special education teacher shortages for over a decade. Special education teachers who leave the profession after a few years certainly contribute to the shortage. Project ReSpecT (Retaining Special Education Teachers) was a federally funded project to develop and implement a mentoring model designed to retain 1st-year special education teachers. The purpose of this article is to describe the first two phases of Project ReSpecT, including the research that led to the development of the model and the pilot test phase. We also discuss the preliminary findings from this study in the context of results from similar programs. We end by discussing implications for educational policy and practice for mentoring models.