School districts face a number of barriers to staffing schools. In districts where teacher vacancies and shortages exist, beginning teachers are often hired to fill positions. In Durham Public Schools, a large number of beginning teachers hired in the 2023-2024 school year were seeking alternative routes to licensure, referred to as AL1s. Literature suggests that alternatively licensed teachers need quality support to offset additional challenges, as compared to traditionally trained teachers, being a lack of pedagogical knowledge, job-specific experience, and confidence. Mentoring is a common induction practice used by many districts to support all beginning teachers. The goals of this qualitative research study were to identify the specific pedagogical knowledge gaps and mentoring practices preferred by AL1s, not enrolled in an EPP, in Durham Public Schools. Study results suggested that participants need an increase of mentor support in the form of modeling classroom practices and are most concerned with student motivation and increasing engagement using differentiated learning experiences. The results of this study imply that its participants would experience an increase of self-efficacy, i.e., confidence, and skill acquisition (pedagogical knowledge) if mentoring support was differentiated to include an increase of modeling. Future research could use this study as guidance for evaluating induction programming and identifying opportunities for differentiation to meet specific needs of subgroups of beginning teachers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]