Travel Grants For Teachers Bring Valuable Experience to the Classroom
Travel Grants For Teachers Bring Valuable Experience to the Classroom
Imagine being a student in a social studies classroom where the teacher has spent the summer studying abroad, bringing the fresh appreciation for the cultures he experienced to each day’s lessons. This is exactly the scenario that teacher travel grants allow.
These grants provide teachers who want to travel with some money to do so. Often, there has to be some education involved with the travel experience, but the experience is still incredibly valuable. Teachers searching for grants for foreign language teachers may also benefit from these travel grants because they can visit places that speak the language they teach, offering new insight to teaching students about the language and the culture that surrounds it. Other teachers who teach in multi-cultural classrooms can use the experience to help them understand the cultures of their students.
Travel experiences allow teachers to refresh themselves after a trying school year. Add to this the fact that the travel brings a new dimension to their education, and you have a winning solution for both teacher and student. That is why these grants are becoming more and more popular.
How To Apply
Many of the current travel grants for teachers are intended to help expand a teacher’s cultural experience and knowledge. When applying, try to focus on ways this will help you in your current classroom. The companies and organizations offering these grants do not want to hear why you want to travel, but rather how traveling will help you be a better teacher. The end goal, remember, is to improve the classroom experience for your students.
If you can see the grant proposal from a teacher who has won the grant in the past, do so. This will help you know how to format yours for the best chance of success. It will also show you the tone that the company likes from its applicants.
Make sure that the grant proposal is concise, clear, and grammatically correct. You do not want it dismissed based on a grammatical error or because you ramble on for page after page about your desires to travel (http://www.expedia.com/.)
More Resources
The Fund for Teachers is a prominent option offering travel grants for teachers. The grants are quite substantial, up to $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for groups, and teachers will have to show how their summer travels influenced their teaching.
The Earthwatch Institute also provides these types of grants. The goal of these travel experiences is to help teachers see for themselves how ecological and environmental efforts are working in the field, using that information to inspire students to do more to protect the environment. This is available to any teacher, regardless of grade or subject area, who is interested in spending the summer working on an environmental project.
The US Department of Education has an International Education Programs Service that sponsors a few travel programs, like the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Aboard Program. These invite teachers to take classes at an international location, where they not only learn the topic of the classes, but also to interact with the families of another culture.
The English-Speaking Union of the United States offers grants to teachers interested in traveling to take courses in the UK. This grant program is only offered to secondary teachers and often focuses on drama and English topics.
Other programs to look into include the Toyota International Teacher Program, the American Councils for International Education Seminars, the Transatlantic Outreach Program, and the Heifer International Study Tours for Educators in Honduras.
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