Sunday, February 05, 2006
By Your (Personal) Leave
Whenever the school district schedules a professional development day, there is a universal temptation for all the teachers to take that day off. Whether or not one chooses to use a personal leave day or come down with a case of the P.D. flu, a three day weekend is generally more appealing than the standard array of breakout groups, guest speakers, and departmental meetings. This temptation becomes nearly irresistable when the district decides to schedule two such professional development days in a row, and you almost always see a significant decrease in attendance on the second day.
I was weighing the merits of taking a day off myself after sitting through Thursday afternoon's professional development on standardized testing. (More on that in a later post) After discussion with a colleague, we actually determined that it would actually maximize utility within the school if teachers took professional development days off.
Consider the fact that teachers who feel the need to take a personal leave day can do so either on a regular school day (i.e. with students in the building) or on a professional develoment day (i.e. with no students in the building). Although the teacher's utility is arguably equal in both cases, in the former, the administration is left in the frustrating position of finding a substitute or splitting up the class in the event that the substitute does not arrive. Similarly, the students are more likely to act out without their regular teacher in the classroom and less likely to gain anything substantive from the substitute's presence, despite the presence of emergency lesson plans. In point of fact, it is more likely that they will end up leaving the classroom an even greater state of disrepair than normal. And all of these hassles would of course lead to diminished personal happiness on the teacher's part upon returning to the classroom!
Based on these assumptions, it therefore seems that from a purely utilitarian standpoint, it makes the most sense to skip professional development days if a day off is deemed necessary.
Of course, the real question is if any personal day is truly necessary. If you are in the unfortunate position of having a strong sense of duty and only take days off when one is actually sick, then this whole discussion is moot.
Which is how I ended up spending several of the most pointless hours of my life in the library on Friday afternoon.
But that is a story for another time...
Whenever the school district schedules a professional development day, there is a universal temptation for all the teachers to take that day off. Whether or not one chooses to use a personal leave day or come down with a case of the P.D. flu, a three day weekend is generally more appealing than the standard array of breakout groups, guest speakers, and departmental meetings. This temptation becomes nearly irresistable when the district decides to schedule two such professional development days in a row, and you almost always see a significant decrease in attendance on the second day.
I was weighing the merits of taking a day off myself after sitting through Thursday afternoon's professional development on standardized testing. (More on that in a later post) After discussion with a colleague, we actually determined that it would actually maximize utility within the school if teachers took professional development days off.
Consider the fact that teachers who feel the need to take a personal leave day can do so either on a regular school day (i.e. with students in the building) or on a professional develoment day (i.e. with no students in the building). Although the teacher's utility is arguably equal in both cases, in the former, the administration is left in the frustrating position of finding a substitute or splitting up the class in the event that the substitute does not arrive. Similarly, the students are more likely to act out without their regular teacher in the classroom and less likely to gain anything substantive from the substitute's presence, despite the presence of emergency lesson plans. In point of fact, it is more likely that they will end up leaving the classroom an even greater state of disrepair than normal. And all of these hassles would of course lead to diminished personal happiness on the teacher's part upon returning to the classroom!
Based on these assumptions, it therefore seems that from a purely utilitarian standpoint, it makes the most sense to skip professional development days if a day off is deemed necessary.
Of course, the real question is if any personal day is truly necessary. If you are in the unfortunate position of having a strong sense of duty and only take days off when one is actually sick, then this whole discussion is moot.
Which is how I ended up spending several of the most pointless hours of my life in the library on Friday afternoon.
But that is a story for another time...
