Teachers who are always on the lookout for ways to enhance their knowledge of a subject and the way they can teach it can often benefit from tours and travel, either abroad or around the country. Just as students long to have class outside now and then, teachers have plenty of opportunities to do the same with tours geared toward educators and sometimes their students, too. In many cases, teachers can write for grants from their local education foundations to help cover the costs of these trips, while some organizations do their best to keep costs low for teachers paying everything out of pocket. Still other travel companies let teachers travel for free, provided they bring along a minimum number of paying students.
GEEO is a nonprofit organization that puts together two- and three-week summer trips to places around the globe just for teachers and their traveling companions. Because the tours focus on education, school visits in the various destinations are always on the itinerary. The idea is that teachers may pick up ideas that they can carry back into their own classrooms.
Graduate level and professional development credits are also available for participating teachers. The teacher-tourists must also agree to implement a GEEO Education Plan upon their return to work, but the organization has ideas and blueprints for how best to turn that trip into a lesson plan or series of classroom activities.
GEEO: Global Exploration for Educators Organization
125 Conway Avenue
Narberth, PA 19072
USA
(877) 600-0105
www.geeo.org
EF tours for teachers and students truly span the globe, with preset tours to places ranging from Ireland to China and dozens of places in between. You can also work with EF to plan a customized trip for you and your students. Costs vary, but deals can be worked out for teachers who bring a large group of students and adult chaperones along.
The available options can appeal to teachers in most subject areas. The United Kingdom tours, for example include a "Science and Innovation in England" tour and the theater-focused "Curtain Time in London" tour.
EF Educational Tours
EF Center Boston
One Education Street
Cambridge, MA 02141-1883
(800) 637-8222
www.eftours.com
This one is a little closer to home for teachers in the United States. But unless you're based in New England, a few weeks exploring the bays, bogs, forests, estuaries and critters in and around Maine's Acadia National Park will seem like an adventure all the same. The focus here is obviously on science, but there are programs that also combine science with writing and the arts. Teachers of kindergarten through 12th grade are encouraged to check it out and earn graduate credits as well.
College of the Atlantic
105 Eden Street
Bar Harbor, ME 04609
(207) 288-5015
www.coa.edu
