Professional Development Day
what the hell is it?
2008-10-24
By Eric Easter

Parents looking for schools have all kinds of questions to consider: Public or Private? City or Suburbs? Near the house or out of bounds? Spanish or Chinese? What are the teacher ratios? How many of the kindergarteners get into Harvard 12 years later?

But once your kid gets in, working parents seem to have one, and only one, burning question that comes up frequently at the water cooler: What the hell is a professional development day and why can’t they “develop” during the summer when they have three months off?

With parents working twice as hard these days, time off is hard to come by. Few parents are happy about giving up vacation and sick days to accommodate closed school days on top of holidays, snow closings and sneaking away at lunch for assemblies.

Since parents never ask this question to the principal for fear of seeming unappreciative or worse,  we took the bullet for you and asked Bonnie Wishne, director of the private Ancona School in Chicago’s Hyde Park.

In Wishne’s words:

“Like all professionals, teachers need to keep abreast of developments in their field and to continually improve their knowledge and skills.  And, just like a corporation that sends its executives off for team-building, schools work better when teachers have time to learn with and from each other, to collaborate on plans for instruction and to get to know their colleagues better.

It is simply not possible to free an entire faculty during school days when the vast majority of teacher time is spent directly with children; hence the need for development days. All educators know that days off are difficult for parents, but I would argue that the overall benefits to a child’s education are well worth the periodic inconvenience. (In a perfect world, the workplace would recognize the importance of development days and give the parents time off to care for their children while teachers work!)” 

Of course, on the sly we asked a number of teachers as well, and while few teachers will admit it to your face, no matter how much they love the job, taking care of a classroom of runny-nosed kids -- especially those in early child development -- every day is a challenging and exhausting job.

So while some professional development actually does occur on professional development days, apparently these days are also akin to school-sanctioned mental health days. The sessions are just as much about positive reinforcement, talking to real live adults and yes, a break from your bad-ass kids, as they are about training.

As to the question of why they can’t use the summer break to develop professionally instead of eating up your vacation days, there is also a practical answer.

According to Wishne:

"Most teacher contracts usually do not include the summer months, though some charter schools have a longer year for teachers to facilitate development.  Every teacher I know, however, spends some of his/her summer “vacation” attending classes and workshops, retooling curricula and planning for the coming school year." 

Now you can simmer at the water cooler a little bit more informed.

Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing Company. He writes about politics, culture and technology for Ebonyjet.com.