Our Impact
By changing the way we recruit, prepare, and support teachers, we can transform education in Arizona.
Yes, we want to help solve Arizona’s teacher shortage. But it’s more than that. Our goal is to recruit, prepare, and support highly effective teachers. Teachers who will become lifelong educators, committed to both their profession and the students they serve. We believe that through the Arizona Teacher Residency approach, every child in Arizona will one day be able to receive an outstanding education.
Program Highlights
We enrolled our first cohort, a group of 22, in the summer of 2022. They graduated with their master’s degree from NAU in late spring of 2024. We are now preparing our third cohort of AZTR residents!
Preparing a Varied Group of Educators
This first Arizona Teacher Residency cohort includes people from a variety of age groups and walks of life. The group includes both recent college graduates and mid-career switchers from a range of professions, including social work, real estate development, aviation, and engineering. Many have worked in schools as paraprofessionals, substitute teachers, office technicians, and assistants.
Residents come from a range of cultural backgrounds
A significant proportion (around 1/3) of each cohort are men.
Residents also represent a range of ages and life experiences, some coming from long careers in fields like social work, accounting, aviation, or nursing.
Have teachers from a range of backgrounds and life experience matters because teachers—more than any other school factor—impact student achievement the most. Teachers who reflect and understand their students have been shown to improve their educational outcomes.
Benefits of Teacher Residency Programs
Although The Arizona Teacher Residency Program is the first and only National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) affiliated program in AZ, more than 40 programs exist across the country. These programs have demonstrated benefits in the following areas:
After three years,
85% of graduates
from an NCTR partner
residency are
still teaching.
Graduates of teacher
residency programs
outperform
those from other programs in
student achievement data over time.
Through coherent structures, residencies powerfully shape
new teachers’ pedagogical
and relational practices.
More than 93% of principals
report residents from NCTR partner programs to be more
prepared to teach compared to
a typical first-year teacher.