Five Benefits for Teachers Traveling with Students

Author : GROUND Asia | Tag : For Teachers, For Faculty

There are all sorts of benefits for school students or undergraduates joining an educational school or university travel program, from strengthening leadership skills and building resilience to teaching patience and cross-cultural understanding. At the same time it’s also an opportunity for teachers – not just to gain invaluable teaching experience – but to further their careers and seek new opportunities in their respective educational fields. 

Here are five reasons why at GROUND Asia we believe joining one of our customized educational travel programs will be a positive move for your career:

1. Personal Professional Development

Both public and independent schools require their educators to engage in activities that further professional development. To find out more simply approach your head of department or faculty and see if your students’ upcoming travel program might satisfy one or more requirements for furthering your professional credentials. Traveling abroad to one of the local communities that GROUND Asia works with is an ideal example of work that can be professionally rewarding and also fun.

2. Networking Opportunities

The chance for you to travel abroad with your students can open up all sorts of doors to you professionally, not to mention the opportunity to see places and do things that wouldn’t necessarily be possible, if you were traveling on your own finances. Establishing friendships with people abroad gives rise to opportunities for professional connections that can expose you to new career prospects. In other words, it’s a chance to build your network on the global stage, where you are more likely to meet professionals from a more diverse range of backgrounds. You can even start the process of connecting with individuals who are from the country you plan to visit while still at home – a useful way to open doors, once you arrive.

3. Project Planning and Inspiration

Leading a student travel program is also an opportunity for you to assign your students new projects, or they may even decide to create their own. One student, or a group of students, could serve as the program’s photographers; another could create a website; while others who are interested in writing, for example, could develop a blog. This work done could become part of a senior project for your students, or it could be a source of inspiration for younger students in the future. As an educator taking part in a student travel program, you can begin to think outside the box – inspiring your students, and using the travel experience to bring your lessons to life.

4. Real-time Teaching Outcomes

Traveling abroad with your students is a chance for you to observe and gauge the efficacy of your classroom teaching strategies. For example, if the purpose of your educational travel program is foreign language immersion, you can watch how your students cope with the local language, like interacting with native speakers. You also get to see how quickly they adapt to the local culture and pick up new vocabulary, expressions, or phrases not learned in the classroom. Once you return home, these observations will enable you to modify or adapt your curriculum, or classroom techniques, to better facilitate your students’ needs.

5. Staying Connected

Once you return home, it’s important that you stay in contact with all the new friends, like-minded professionals, and local contacts you made during your educational travel tour. This will make it much easier for you to strike up conversations in the future about new job prospects and potential career changes, and will enable you to learn about the career moves others have made too. Networking with professionals and educators you’ve met abroad will also provide you with access to real-world case studies and the potential to develop new classroom projects and teaching material. 

For more information on GROUND Asia’s high school and university educational travel programs, get in touch with us here.