Professional Development Days Overview

Simply put, professional development days, sometime called in-service days, staff days, or workdays, are days that the staff in your school are present while children aren’t. Generally, the point of these days is to have workshops, longer meetings, or work times that aren’t feasible during the typical weekday. These days are paid for all staff, sometimes starting later or ending earlier than usual. Sometimes the topics covered are required yearly trainings like CPR, nutrition, or mandated reporting, and sometimes speakers might be invited for workshops or seminars. It’s also not uncommon for program administration and staff to schedule the flow of the day and facilitate any types of meetings or presentations.

If you only read one sentence about in service days, let it be this: ensure that there is time allotted for staff members to do what they need to do, on their own. Block off at least an hour and a half for teachers to reorganize, clean, plan, discuss, place orders, make lists, check-in about needs, and just work. Your staff are professionals, and teaching comes with an inordinate amount of bits and pieces to manage.

Let them get it done by providing the time and place to do so! (If you’re worried about someone having ‘nothing’ to do, I guarantee there is a closet that can be organized, another classroom that needs help sorting papers, or another project that you can get assistance with.)

One of the trickiest part of these days is deciding when to schedule them. If they’re scheduled during holidays, you might run into some grumpy faces; schedule them during the standard workweek, and you might risk depriving your families of childcare to a point where they can’t justify your services. If you schedule them on a weekend… Oof.

Often, schools and programs will try for the days near a bank holiday in order to give families an extended break while ensuring teachers still receive their holiday (for example, in the US, President’s Day or Memorial Day are always on Mondays, so many PD days take place on the preceding Friday). Many places have the half or full week before the start of a school year as in service days, and might end the school year on a Wednesday so that the following two days are in service as well.

There’s no magic number of in-service days that will be effective for your staff. If you’re part of a chain or group of centers, you might have a certain number required by the establishment, and a certain number you’re expected to fill on your own. Independent programs and home-based programs should check in with their licensing agency to see how many (if any) they’re required to have, then decide what schedule makes the most sense.

If your program is open from 9a-12p with 6 children and closed on Fridays, you probably don’t need one day a month for in service days; you might take two per year to attend a conference or do a nice deep clean. With a 6a-6p center of four classrooms and an ongoing year-long teacher-led study project revitalizing program curriculum, you might take one day per quarter to let teachers update each other on their work in the mornings, then work on their own in the afternoon.

One final, weirdly specific thing: consider asking people meaningful questions that relate to the content at hand instead of having them do a painfully patronizing ice breaker activity. ‘In one word, describe your hopes for the children in your care’ tells you a lot more than ‘two truths and a lie’ ever will. I’ll hop off my soapbox now.

Actually, one more soapbox point: please don’t make it an in-person presentation if it can be an email. Let teachers use their time for the things they need to get done.

Where to Include

At Playvolution HQ, we recommend using the Three Handbook Method.

Consider adding this policy to your Staff Handbook.

Considerations

• When will you be determining the in-service day schedule? How will parents and staff members be alerted?
• Life happens: some staff members will know well in advance if they can’t attend a workshop (a family wedding, perhaps) and others might get food poisoning the night before. How will you ensure that you have time to follow up with them about their needs?
• Will you have some sort of ‘steering committee’ within your staff to help decide what sort of workshops or presentations will be relevant, or will you decide the agenda on your own? How far in advance will you tell people?
• Are there specific school events or traditions (like an open house, exhibition, or performance) that might benefit from a whole work day of preparation? Is it feasible to provide that to your staff?

Sample Policies

NOTE: The following samples are real-world examples relating to this post’s topic and are provided as a reference for creating your own policies and procedures. Sharing them here is not a recommendation of their content.

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

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