This study contributes to the literature on first year teachers by identifying complexities and struggles of becoming a teacher and the implications of district-university partnerships to strengthen our educator preparation program. The importance of partnerships with stakeholders, memorandum of agreements to share data, observations of first year teachers by university faculty, employer surveys, and the first year teacher’s perspectives about how well our university prepared them, as well as how they compare with other first year teachers nationally is addressed. Multiple sources of data were used to provide information about completers, individuals that graduated from the educator preparation program. These include state reports, national trends, and review of survey results next to universities across the United States involved in teacher preparation. Graduates of our teacher preparation program have a 93% retention rate after five years of teaching. The national average is 50% after five years.