The number of teacher work days has increased exponentially in the past few years.
In the 2021-22 school year, Alpine School District provided teachers with 2 professional development days. In 2022-2023 that number increased to 3. Finally, this year (2023-2024) we have jumped to a total of 6 professional development/teacher work days.
David Ludwig, an assistant principal here at Mountain View explained why we have teacher work days. When asked what teachers do on work days, he said, “It would be unfair of me to take like an hour of their time and say ‘hey come learn this new thing’ or ‘come work on this project’. It’s really meant for them to catch up on grades, remediate with kids, send emails, and prepare—It’s a prep time. It is teacher-directed.” What effect do these extra work days have on teachers? He answered, “I don’t have any numbers to back it up but I would say that from a job satisfaction standpoint, teachers need more work time.” Teacher work days seemingly have a positive effect on teachers and staff, but what about the students? From an assistant principal standpoint, Mr. Ludwig said, “Everyone needs a break every once in a while. Like a little recharge. Get away—maybe do some homework. But maybe just get away and appreciate school more when you come back.” From a student perspective, Annika Wood, a senior at Mountain View said this about how teacher work days impact her learning style: “It is nice when there is extra time over the weekend to get caught up on homework and to spend more time connecting with friends and doing fun things that you don’t always have time for during school.”
The increase of teacher work days in the Alpine School District calendar has made an overwhelmingly positive impact on both teachers and students. It is looking like teacher work days are here to stay! The 2025 district calendar includes 5 teacher work days. Hopefully we will continue to see the positive effects of teacher work days moving forward.
Teacher work days were born out of necessity during COVID-19. As schools went back to in-person learning in August 2020, the schedule was modified to have every Wednesday as a professional development day to give teachers time to build both online and in-person lesson plans. This resulted in the Utah State Board of Education changing its time requirements for schools. Schools are no longer required to have a certain number of days, rather they are required to have a certain amount of “seat time.” Seat time is the number of minutes the student is in their seat (or class) learning. These seat times have also become more flexible because of COVID-19. All of these factors have been key elements that explain how the increase in teacher workdays has been achieved.
