Our objective was to quantify the associations between daycare and cortisol and to identify individual and environmental conditions under which daycare attendance is associated with cortisol concentrations. Site-based staff development can be, and often is, ineffective.ĭaycare stress can be indexed by cortisol, and elevated levels of cortisol have been implicated in the onset and development of mental health disorders. It is critical, however, that leaders understand that simply shifting to site-based staff development does not ensure improved learning for either adults or students. Job-embedded staff development, by definition, will move the focus of professional learning to the school site.
When teachers work together to develop curriculum that delineates the essential knowledge and skills each student is to acquire, when they create frequent common assessments to monitor each student's learning on a timely basis, when they collectively analyze results from those assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses, and when they help each other develop and implement strategies to improve current levels of student learning, they are engaged in the kind of professional development that builds teacher capacity and sustains school improvement. The traditional notion that regarded staff development as an occasional event that occurred off the school site has gradually given way to the idea that the best staff development happens in the workplace rather than in a workshop.
School leaders must end this distinction between working and learning and create conditions that enable staff to grow and learn as part of their daily or weekly work routines. They operate in a way that suggests teachers work (teach) 180 or so days a year and learn (attend programs) on four or five days each year set aside for professional development. Most schools and districts have created an artificial distinction between working and learning.
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