9 Benefits of Travel That Improve Teaching
Your students are so lucky to have a teacher interested in traveling! The benefits of travel for teachers aren’t limited to the classroom (for students and teachers). Check out how your classroom instruction and resources can benefit from teacher travel.
Vacation vs. Travel
I first want to clarify the difference between vacation and travel before digging into the benefits of travel for teachers. One is not necessarily better than the other, but there are distinct differences between a vacation and travel.
When I picture a vacation, I imagine walking out of a pristine resort room down to the picturesque private beach, lounging on a comfortable chair, sipping on a fancy drink, and later eating to my heart’s content from the expansive buffet. I may only leave the resort if I’m on an all-inclusive, guided tour. It doesn’t sound too bad, but it sounds expensive.
Travel is more of my style and fits my budget. To travel takes planning, a willingness to try new things, overcoming challenges, and stepping out of your comfort zone. While vacationing tends to be stationary, traveling provides opportunities to move around, see different areas of a country, and really explore the culture.
Following the advice of local tour guides, you can spend the day hiking, seeking out a lesser-known waterfall, and eating your picnic lunch while watching the sun peek through the tree canopy.
Vacation and travel are both great options for recharging your batteries, but you and your students will benefit more if you get out and really experience the world.
Read on to see the benefits of travel that will help develop you into a better teacher!
9 Benefits of Travel for Teachers
How many nights and weekends have you sacrificed your personal time to grade papers, search Pinterest for the perfect bulletin board, worry about why your meticulously planned lesson flopped? You have survived no-show subs, homecoming week, and flu season. When it is time for a school holiday, take a break, you earned time for relaxing teacher travel! Teachers work really hard during the school year and our jobs are physically and emotionally exhausting. There are many benefits of teacher travel and school breaks provide ideal opportunities to try new activities, expand your content, and recharge your batteries.
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Go on adventures
- Collect resources for your classroom
- Show students the world through your travels
- Exposure to different languages
- Eat local food
- Explore the world’s diverse ecosystems
- Meet new people
- Enjoy your time off
1. Step out of your comfort zone
According to Merriam-Webster, a comfort zone is “the level at which one functions with ease and familiarity.” For many of us, our comfort zones are where we remain during our day-to-day lives, but travel pushes you into unfamiliar settings. Each successful experience just beyond your comfort zone will build your strength and confidence in your independence and sense of adventure. Your students will see your push beyond your comfort zone and be inspired to create their own adventures.
After you navigate an international flight, public transportation in an unfamiliar setting, and/or eating something that you can’t quite identify, the challenges you face in your classroom suddenly don’t seem so overwhelming. Having confidence in managing complicated and uncomfortable situations will develop you into a better traveler and teacher.
Following your break-time adventures, implementing a new activity or learning strategy in your classroom will feel like a breeze.
2. Go on adventures
New places present new, exciting opportunities! You can plan your trip around any desired activity or find an affordable flight and be spontaneous. Interested in going snorkeling? Hawaii, the Caribbean, and Central America are perfect for that! Did you know the second largest reef is in Belize (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia)? For more adventure travel inspiration around the world, check out Adventure in You.
You don’t even need to leave the United States to have an adventure. Plan a road trip to see the diverse nature and cultures throughout the United States. I highly recommend a National Parks Tour in the United States. Check out these can’t miss National Parks road trips by Jetsetter.
3. Collect Resources for Your Classroom
I love bringing home artifacts from other states and countries to share with my students. Until I found this cup, I never had a real-life example of centiliters.
Coins and paper bills are fun for students to observe. Even if it doesn’t connect directly with your curriculum, we have used Colombian coins instead of quarters to call “heads or tails.”
My favorite resources to collect are FREE pamphlets and maps. They are informational with attractive pictures and fit easily in your luggage. In order to keep the pamphlets from bending and ripping, store them in a pencil pouch and lay it flat in your luggage.
Pictures from your travels make excellent classroom resources. When I first began traveling I wanted to be “in the moment” and avoided having my phone out. Now, I wish I had more pictures from some of those early destinations. My advice to myself and you is to find a balance between snapping pictures and taking in the views. I’m currently on a mission to use solely my own pictures for class notes.
Decorate your classroom with FREE travel prints.
4. Show Students the World Through Travel
Many students have never had the chance to explore far beyond their communities, which presents a barrier when teaching content that reaches outside of your region. Through teacher travel, you can maximize content connections to real-life situations that motivate and engage your students. When teachers explore, we can expand our curriculum beyond the textbook and inspire students to become lifelong learners.
Do only my students struggle with geography? Surely and unfortunately, this problem extends beyond Southern Illinois. This 2014 report from the local CBS station in Chicago points out that less than half of the 12 million people who played an online game could name all 50 states. A National Geographic article highlights the problem of geographic illiteracy on an international level too. How can we expect students to connect to content if they can’t visualize the locations or even find them on a map?
To combat the geography struggles, I’ve added maps around my room, maps to our notes, and maps to students’ Exploration Passports. We find the locations we’re discussing on the map and students mark the National Parks we “visit” while learning about geology on their maps. It’s a natural way of talking about locations, making a connection to a place, and hopefully getting some of the geography to stick in the minds of teenagers.
5. Exposure to different languages
You don’t have to be fluent in a second language to travel, although it is helpful to learn a few key phrases before you leave. Look up and practice some niceties such as hello, please, and thank you in the language of your destination; politeness goes a long way in any country.
Heading towards the train station we accidentally got off the bus at the wrong stop in a small neighborhood in Pisa, Italy. Asking for directions was complicated by the fact that we don’t speak Italian and the people we encountered didn’t speak English. Some quick thinking got us to, “choo, choo?” with a shrug and quizzical look. It worked! She pointed us in the right direction and we made it to the train on time.
A helpful hint for international travel, download the Google Translate App for Apple or Android before you go. The versatility of this app is remarkable. Trying to translate text from a sign or menu? Hold your phone camera towards the text and the translation will appear on the screen. It’s that easy! There are also options for translating handwritten text, voice, and information you type into the app.
Not planning to use data abroad? No worries because Google Translate works offline for over 50 languages. Simply download the desired language to your phone while connected to the Internet and you’re good to go.
6. Eat local food
What’s my favorite cultural experience? Eating! I love trying local cuisine and seek out restaurants where the locals eat wherever I go. You can typically find these just a few blocks away from the touristy restaurants and they tend to be cheaper too!
How does this help your teaching? Unless you are a foods teacher, allow me to get creative here. A well-nourished teacher is a happy teacher. That works, right?
7. Explore the world’s diverse ecosystems
Guided hikes or going out on your own hikes are fantastic opportunities to explore the biodiversity and ecosystems of a region. My greatest benefits of travel come from experiencing the diverse ecosystems of the world. Guided hikes and tours can range from free to whatever you’re willing to pay for an experience. Many cities and National Parks offer free walking tours. At the end of the tour, you tip the guide what you think the tour was worth (typically $5-10).
Here are some of my favorites guided hikes/tours:
- ATM Cave in San Ignacio, Belize
- White water rafting in La Fortuna, Costa Rica
- Crystal Cave in Sequoia National Park, California
- Snorkeling in Caye Caulker, Belize
- Free tours with a Park Ranger at National Parks across USA
Airbnb Experiences is an up and coming platform to find opportunities to engage with local people and learn something about their culture. According to their website, Airbnb Experiences is an opportunity for people to share their hobbies, skills, or expertise with the world.
8. Meet new people
The final benefit of travel for teachers is the opportunity to learn about and from people who have fascinating and unique stories. Not to mention the network of people you can build from around the world.
While traveling in New Orleans, I lucked into meeting a group of physicists from the Netherlands, Poland, and Austria who were attending a conference. They agreed to let me record them talking about their research so I could share it with my students. How great of a classroom resource is it to know people from various states and different continents?
9. Enjoy your time off
One of the best perks of teaching is the schedule. With so much time off, why wouldn’t you get out and explore?! The process of planning a trip builds anticipation for a grand adventure as you research where to go and what to do. Then, you have something exciting to look forward to during your next break.
Even a long-weekend trip can work wonders for your soul. As nice as a vacation can be for recharging your batteries, you and your students will benefit more if you get out and travel.
Teachers work hard and commit a lot of hours to their students’ needs; you earn your breaks, so take advantage of this time off. Enjoying your time off while gaining new experiences is one of the best benefits of travel.
Ready to Plan Your Travel?
Now that you’ve read the benefits of travel to develop better teachers, you’re ready to begin planning your trip! Where will your adventures take you and your students?
Teacher PD Adventures
I love travel so much! I love learning so much! Seriously, if someone paid me to be a life-long student I’d go for it. My teacher friends asked me to plan travel for them and I couldn’t say no. In fact, I said, let’s opening it up to all teachers!
Teacher PD Adventures is a way for teachers to travel and participate in professional development. Check out the current travel plans and join teachers for epic on-location professional development!
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