From Day One to Leading the Classroom: Learning Through the Arizona Teacher Residency
Arizona Teacher Residency participant Michael Lamb is spending an entire school year learning alongside students and an experienced teacher, putting what he learns at NAU into practice in a Tucson classroom.
A classroom full of second graders gathered on the floor. At the front of the group, Michael Lamb held up a book and began an interactive read-aloud.
For an experienced teacher, it might look like an ordinary moment in the school day.
For Lamb, an Arizona Teacher Residency Cohort 5 resident, it represented an important milestone: his first “at bat” leading a lesson with students.
And he didn’t have to wait until the end of his teacher preparation program to experience it.
Learning to teach by being part of a classroom
Lamb has been immersed in the daily life of a second-grade classroom at Tanque Verde Elementary School in Tucson since the first day of the 2026–27 school year.
Over the course of his yearlong residency, moments like his first read-aloud will become increasingly familiar.
Lamb and his Arizona Teacher Residency classmates gradually take on more instructional responsibilities throughout the year while developing relationships with students, families, and the experienced educators working alongside them.
That extended classroom experience is central to the residency model.
Rather than learning about teaching in one setting and waiting to apply it later, residents have opportunities to connect the two in real time.
A lesson about literacy can influence tomorrow’s instruction. Coursework in child development can help a resident better understand a student. Learning about assessment can change how a resident looks for evidence of student understanding.
Concepts related to culturally responsive teaching can become part of the decisions residents make as they get to know the strengths, assets, experiences, and families of the students in their classroom.
Arizona Teacher Residency Cohort 5 resident Michael Lamb leads an interactive read-aloud with second-grade students at Tanque Verde Elementary School in Tucson.
Learning from the lesson—and from a mentor
Leading the lesson is only one part of the learning process.
After his read-aloud, Lamb met with his supervising teacher for immediate mentorship and feedback through what the Arizona Teacher Residency calls a “Sacred Meeting” conversation.
That relationship between resident and supervising teacher is at the heart of the residency experience.
Residents have an experienced educator alongside them as they move from observing instruction to participating in it and, eventually, taking greater responsibility for the classroom.
Feedback therefore isn’t something that happens only after a formal observation. It becomes part of an ongoing cycle:
learn → teach → reflect → receive feedback → adjust → teach again.
The program also views sustained mentorship as an important protective factor against teacher burnout and attrition.
A full year to know students and families
Time matters when you’re learning to teach.
Because Lamb will spend the entire school year as an integral member of the classroom community, he has opportunities to see students grow over time rather than encountering them during only a short clinical placement.
He can learn who they are as learners, recognize their strengths, understand their needs, and develop relationships with their families.
Those relationships also give residents an opportunity to understand something that can’t be fully recreated in a university classroom: teaching is built through hundreds of interactions over time.
A read-aloud is one of them.
So is responding when a student is confused. Celebrating when something finally makes sense. Adjusting tomorrow’s lesson because today’s didn’t go as planned. Talking with a family. Learning from a mentor.
Together, those experiences help transform knowledge about teaching into the practice of being a teacher.
Preparing for a classroom of his own
Lamb’s first “at bat” was just that…a first.
Over the coming months, he will continue taking on greater instructional responsibility while learning alongside his students and supervising teacher.
By the end of the residency, the goal is not simply for residents to have completed a series of required field experiences. It is for them to enter their own classrooms having already experienced the rhythms, relationships, responsibilities, challenges, and rewards of an entire school year.
And while residents are learning, their presence can also make an immediate contribution to the students, families, and Arizona schools they serve.
For aspiring educators like Lamb, that means learning to become a teacher by doing what teachers do every day: building relationships, making decisions, reflecting, adapting—and teaching.
Interested in becoming a teacher through an immersive, yearlong classroom experience? Explore the Arizona Teacher Residency and learn how you can prepare to teach while becoming part of an Arizona school community.
Explore the Arizona Teacher Residency