I love to see educators travel and come back changed (in the BEST possible way!).
Not in a vague "travel is broadening" way. In a real, classroom-altering way. I have seen such magic happen again and again with teachers I know and have worked with. One brought back a unit on Roman civic infrastructure that her seventh graders still talk about. Another rewrote her geometry course around the cathedrals of northern France (yes, really, and the kids LOVED it). A third came home, applied for a Fulbright, and a year later was teaching in Indonesia.
As an international educator, I get a lot of queries about – you guessed it – teacher travel. Every single year, teachers ask me the same question:
Is teacher travel actually possible on a teacher's salary, on a teacher's calendar, with a teacher's life?
The answer is YES. And it is more fundable, more flexible, and more available than most teachers realize.
This is your guide to what teacher travel actually is, how to fund it (there are grants you have probably never heard of!), how to pick a program that fits your career, and how to bring it back into your classroom so its impact lasts.
Why teacher travel matters (and why it is worth doing)
Teachers who travel are different teachers when they get back! (We all know this. It is worth restating – and prioritizing for ourselves.)
That sort of intercultural growth is the simplest case for teacher travel, and it is also the strongest. Our article on How traveling the world makes you a better educator covers the lived experience side of this in depth. The short version: time on the ground in a different culture hones the questions you bring to your classroom, the empathy you bring to your students, and the curiosity you model every day.
This is also a great learning opportunity for you personally. Educators are some of the most curious lifelong learners I know (you, too!), and travel is one of the most direct paths to the kind of learning that does not happen in a PD workshop in someone’s classroom. The same principle that powers all of education through travel applies double for teachers, the people who turn their own learning into their students' learning. Exponential results at work!
And the practical case? Most teachers who travel come back with concrete classroom material. Photos, artifacts, recipes, recordings, contacts at host schools, partner classrooms for video exchanges (yes, your students will be VERY impressed when their teacher arranges video-chatting with a classroom in Tokyo - and pen pals to last their lives!). The trip pays for itself many times over in the years of teaching that follow.
Tip: Start two "travel-to-classroom" folders on day one of any trip – one physical folder, one folder on your phone. Photos, audio clips, ticket stubs, restaurant receipts, clips of locals singing and birds chirping…anything that could turn into a lesson hook later. You will thank yourself in October.
What counts as teacher travel
There is no single thing called teacher travel. There are four functional categories, and most teachers end up doing several over their career. Knowing which one fits your current life can quickly help you decide which to focus on now.
Funded professional development programs
These are programs designed for teachers, built around the school calendar, and often fully or partially funded. The big names every U.S. teacher should know:
- Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms (administered by IREX, funded by the U.S. State Department). The trip itself plus pre-departure PD plus a global cohort of educators. These are fully funded for accepted teachers!
- Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA), also IREX-administered. Two-week professional exchange for middle and high school teachers. Fully funded, round-trip airfare, lodging, daily stipend, emergency medical evacuation.
- Fund for Teachers grants. You design the trip yourself. Fund for Teachers will fund it (up to several thousand dollars per teacher). This is the closest thing to a self-directed sabbatical that exists for K-12 teachers in the United States.
- GEEO (Global Exploration for Educators Organization) trips. Discount group travel built for teachers, with PD credit available. Read a teacher's journey with GEEO for the phenomenological perspective.
These programs are real, they accept new cohorts every year, and (this part is important) they are CONSISTENTLY UNDER-APPLIED. The barrier is mostly that teachers do not know they exist. Now, you do. Go for it!
Self-designed sabbatical travel
If a funded program does not fit your timing or your subject area, you can build your own (here are some ideas). The Fund for Teachers grant essentially exists to support this. So do many state-level teacher mini-grants, rotary club grants, education foundation grants in your district, and union-administered travel funds.
Our teacher's guide to programs, funding, and self-designed trips walks through the operational side of designing your own teacher travel. Use it as the companion resource to this guide. It covers the "what fits your subject," "what fits your calendar," and "how to write the application" sections in depth.
Faculty-led student travel
Many teachers travel by leading their own students. EF Tours, ACIS, Explorica, NEH summer programs, and many state-funded student exchanges include compensated faculty leadership. The trip is on the school calendar, the school often covers the leader's costs, and you go (with twenty teenagers, which is its own adventure - yes, the bus where someone lost a passport in Florence is not an urban legend!).
This is the right category if your school already runs student trips and you want to step into leadership. It is also a great way to test whether you actually like leading a group before you commit to a bigger program. Our guide on Beyond the classroom: guided tours for educators covers what to look for in a guided-tour partner.
Summer learning travel
Summer is the teacher's natural travel window, and it is also when the most options open up, including NEH Summer Institutes for Teachers, State Department summer fellowships, and university-hosted continuing education travel (some institutions waive faculty/staff/affiliate fees for K-12 teachers, ask!). Don’t forget less formation educational travel options, including cooking schools, language immersion, archaeology digs, citizen science programs. The list is GENUINELY long!
Summer travel works for teachers who want to build a body of experience over a career without disrupting their school year. A week here, two weeks there. Five summers in, you have a transformed your curriculum, expanded your students’ worldview many times over, and curated a list of connections in five new places.
How to fund teacher travel
Funding is the question that stops most teachers before they start. It should NOT!
Grants and fellowships worth applying for
Beyond Fulbright TGC and Fund for Teachers (covered above), the option for teacher travel grants for educational travel opportunities is significantly bigger than most teachers realize.
A short list of the ones worth knowing about:
- NEH Summer Institutes for Teachers and Scholars. Two- to four-week residential programs with full stipend. Highly competitive but life-changing for the teachers who get in.
- The IREX-administered international teacher programs. Our full IREX page has the more info.
- Goldman Sachs 10,000 Teachers for STEM educators (specific to certain subjects but very well funded).
- State Department Critical Language Scholarships for teachers of less commonly taught languages.
- Rotary International Group Study Exchange for educators who can travel with a Rotary delegation.
- Your state's department of education travel grant lines. These exist in most states and almost no one applies. Look up your state by name plus "teacher travel grant" to find them.
Go local: ask your school principal, your district's grants office, your local 4-H club, and your local education foundation about district-funded teacher travel or continuing professional education funds. Many schools have a budget line for one teacher per year (sometimes more) and have not had an applicant in years.
Scholarships and district support
Many tour operators offer educator scholarships that reduce the cost of group travel. GEEO has a scholarship program. EF Tours offers compensation for faculty group leaders. ACIS has similar arrangements. The arithmetic on these can be surprising; if you bring a group of students, the teacher's slot is often free or even subsidized.
Districts also offer travel-related professional development stipends, conference travel funding, and (often forgotten) tuition reimbursement that can apply to summer travel-study programs accredited through universities.
Self-funded sabbatical approaches
If you are funding the trip yourself, our how to budget for educational travel without financial stress guide is an excellent starting point. Tldr: think in terms of cost per hour of meaningful learning rather than headline price, plan twelve to eighteen months out so you can spread the saving, and consider shoulder season travel in spurts to save money.
How to choose a program that fits your career
Not every program fits every teacher. Pick the one that fits where you are right now.
If you are early in your career: Fund for Teachers is the most flexible. Self-design something tied to your subject area, write a strong application, and use it as a foundation for everything that comes next.
If you teach a specific subject area (history, language, STEM, ESL): look for the subject-specific programs first. NEH for humanities. Goldman Sachs for STEM. State Department language programs for languages. Subject-specific programs have much higher acceptance rates because the applicant pool is narrower.
If you want to lead your own students: start with a single domestic faculty-led trip through your school. Test the leadership experience before you commit to an international group. If you have administrative support: ask your principal directly about Fulbright TGC or TEA. Both require school administrator sign-off, and the application is much easier when your principal is on board from the start.
If you are mid-career and want a real reset: NEH Summer Institutes are the closest a U.S. teacher gets to a residential graduate seminar. Apply. It's absolutely worth it.
Six questions to ask before you apply
Use these to evaluate any program before you put in the application time:
1. Who is running this program, and how long have they been doing it? Three years is the minimum I would commit to. Five-plus is ideal. A new program is often a great experience (and perhaps less expensive), but is also higher risk on the operational side.
2. What is the actual contact time with subject-matter experts? Add the hours on the itinerary. A two-week program with under twenty hours of expert time is mostly tourism. A program with sixty hours of expert time is a real learning program.
3. What credit, PD hours, or transcripts come with the trip, and from which institution? Real graduate credit transcripts from accredited institutions hold up in district recertification reviews and salary lane changes. Vague "certificates of completion" do not.
4. What do alumni say six months after the trip? Ask for two or three alumni contacts. A program that has nothing to share is either too new or has reasons it cannot share. (You want to know either way!)
5. How much time is structured versus open? Programs that fill every hour with bus time and group meals are tour packages. Programs that build in two to three hours of independent time per day are learning programs.
6. What happens if something goes wrong? Insurance, medical evacuation, refund policies. Boring questions, but critically important answers.
How to bring teacher travel back to the classroom
This is where teacher travel makes a difference.
The trip itself is wonderful. The lasting payoff is what you carry into your classroom, your hallway, your faculty meetings, and your students' college essays for the next decade.
The teachers I have watched do this best follow a pattern. They photograph and record (with permission) deliberately while traveling, with specific lessons in mind. They collect physical artifacts the school district will let them bring into the classroom (recipe cards, ticket stubs, regional newspapers, fabric samples, music). They make at least one host-classroom contact during the trip and follow up with a video exchange in the first semester after they return (and, if they are lucky, make it happen more often, by building classroom relationships). They write up one or two units during the school year that explicitly draw on the trip and submit them for district curriculum review. They take a class and connect with locals.
And, this is the part most teachers skip: they tell the story. To students. To their department. To the district board if they were district-funded. To the local newspaper. To Wandering Educators (we publish teacher travel pieces and we WANT to hear from you!). The story IS the case for the next funded teacher. It also influences your students, parents, school, and community about the importance of travel – and bringing it home.
Need resources to back up your case? Our article Ten reasons traveling is the best form of education covers the case in depth. Use it as your talking-point script when you have to persuade a skeptical principal or department chair.
Your framework for building a long-term teacher travel practice
One trip is a marvelous thing. A long-term (lifetime!) teacher travel practice is a different thing entirely.
Here is the framework I share with teachers who want to make travel a recurring, integral part of their career.
Year one: One funded program. Apply (and early!) for the most fundable thing you qualify for. Fund for Teachers, NEH, Fulbright TGC, your state's grant. Don't over-think it. The first one is about getting in the funded teacher travel system and learning how the applications work.
Year two: Build the classroom integration. Take what you learned in year one and turn it into curriculum. Write up the unit. Submit for district review. Use the first trip as the credential that gets you the next thing.
Year three: Take your students or take a sabbatical. By now you have credibility, application experience, and curriculum proof. Either step into faculty-led student travel (your school will know you can lead it!) or apply for a longer-form program (an NEH Summer Institute, a Fulbright TEA, a state-administered exchange).
Year four: Mentor another teacher. Walk a colleague through the Fund for Teachers application. The application gets stronger when more teachers in your school apply, and your principal starts to see teacher travel as a department-strengthening practice. Encourage them to expand their classrooms, globally.
Year five and beyond: Build the international network. By year five, your trips compound. You have classroom partners abroad, alumni from past programs, a national network of educator-travelers. The next applications get easier because the world is now full of people who know your work.
This is the part most teachers never get to because they stop after the first trip. We suggest this framework so you do not stop exponentially building your educational travel and professional development opportunities.
Frequently asked questions
Can you travel as a teacher?
Yes, and more easily than most teachers think. Summer is the obvious window. Sabbaticals, fellowships, and faculty-led student travel open up the rest of the year. Funded programs cover much of the cost.
What is a traveling teacher?
The phrase has two meanings in different communities. In K-12, it often refers to teachers who travel between schools or classrooms as part of their assigned role. In the international teaching community, it refers to educators who travel for personal growth, professional development, teach abroad, or build a career around teaching in different countries. This guide is about the second meaning.
How can teachers travel for free?
Fully funded programs exist. Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms, IREX-administered exchanges, NEH Summer Institutes, and State Department language programs all cover travel for accepted teachers. The "free" part is real for the teachers who apply and get in.
Can teachers claim travel expenses?
It depends on the program structure and your tax situation. Self-funded travel pursued for professional development purposes is sometimes deductible; talk to a tax professional about your specific situation. District-funded travel is reimbursed by your school. Grant-funded travel is funded directly. (We are not tax advisors, just travel ones!)
What grants are available for teacher travel?
Fund for Teachers, Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms (IREX), TEA (IREX), NEH Summer Institutes, GEEO scholarships, state-level teacher travel grant lines, local education foundation grants, Rotary International, and many others.
How do teachers get to travel during the summer?
Summer Institutes, faculty-led student travel, fully funded fellowships that run May to August, university summer programs, language immersion programs, citizen science programs, and self-designed trips, including Fund for Teachers grants. The summer window is the most open for K-12 teachers.
Are there sabbaticals for teachers?
Yes. Some districts offer formal sabbaticals (usually after seven or ten years). Fund for Teachers is the most flexible sabbatical-equivalent. Some teachers self-design a sabbatical year by taking a leave of absence and funding it through a combination of grants, savings, and abroad teaching positions. It is more common than you think.
Teacher travel is not a luxury. It is one of the most efficient professional development practices an educator can build into a career. The funding is real, the programs work, and the classroom payoff lasts for years!
The trip you take next summer can become the unit you teach next October, the international partnership you start next spring, and the global citizens you graduate from your classroom in May. That is how teacher travel compounds.
If you are an educator and you have been telling yourself "someday," let this be your reminder. Pick one program. Apply this fall. Wandering Educators has your back (and we cannot WAIT to hear where you go!).
Have you done a funded teacher travel program? Which one? What did you bring back to your classroom? What surprised you about the application?
Jessie Voigts is the founder and publisher of Wandering Educators. She has a PhD in International Education, has lived and worked in Japan and London, and traveled around the world. She is constantly looking for ways to increase intercultural understanding, and is passionate about study abroad, family travel, and international education.
Find her online via Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.