Do you feel like your students could benefit from the skills and knowledge learned through travel? Have you noticed that getting out of the classroom and experiencing something new energizes you and your students? If you believe in the educational benefits of student travel, then you are in the right place.
GL Travel exists to create memory-making school trips for teachers and their students. As a teacher or parent, after reading this blog, you will come to a better understanding of:
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Why You Should Leave the Classroom
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Benefits of Student Travel
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Wider Perspective
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Social Skills
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Creativity
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Expanding Comfort Zone
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Fostering Independence
Why Leave the Classroom?
No matter how many Smart Boards, videos, or interactive lessons you can incorporate into your classroom, at some point, things will start to feel routine.
You might wonder about new ways to engage your students and get them invested in learning.
When it’s time to spice things up, consider leaving the classroom altogether! Getting your students out of their daily routine and finding a hands-on way for them to learn is a great technique to capture their interest and attention.
Activities outside the classroom help students become more engaged with the lesson, can improve student achievement, and even help with classroom behavior.
It’s also a fun way to apply knowledge and show your students how the lessons apply to them and where they are in the real world.
Leaving the classroom presents all of these benefits, but the real question is how far will you go?
Exploring your city or town can be fun, but there are also a number of benefits to taking your students even further.
Learn more about historic east trips
Benefits of Travel for Students
Traveling outside of their home city can not only provide a more engaging learning environment for your students, it can also have a number of benefits for their personal growth.
Wider Perspective
It’s not uncommon for students to have never left their home state. Sometimes they might have never traveled more than a few towns over.
Taking them somewhere completely new and different can show them that life isn’t the same in every part of the country. Trip participants marvel when they see students (as young as early elementary school) taking the subway to and from school.
Seeing another region or even just a different part of the state can show your students that an area’s history and culture can significantly impact daily life. They’ll have a chance to see different walks of life, new daily routines, and even taste the local cuisine.
Your students may love trying Cuban food in NYC or authentic Italian food in the North End of Boston. Walking to Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond may be the spark that ignites the writer or transcendentalist in your students.
Do your students hang out in the same small groups? A trip to one of the Southern California theme parks for Grad Nite is a chance to let loose with friends and meet students from other high schools.
Experiencing travel is a forced fun way to create a wider perspective and greater understanding of the world.
Social Skills
Two main social skills students can learn on a class trip are teamwork and communication.
As they go through their busy itineraries on a trip, students will have to learn to work with each other and their teachers to make it a pleasant experience for everyone.
This means following rules, encouraging others to do the right thing, and listening to directions when given. Ultimately, all our trip participants represent themselves, their family, their school, and their community back home. Negotiating the shower schedule at night or in the morning. What time the alarm goes off and whether or not you’ll share a bed are the types of conversations participants will have with roommates. (Do not fear. Your trip leader will try to room you with someone you know, and if you don’t know anyone, it’s a chance to make new friends.)
There’s nothing more important on a trip far from home than communication. Students will have to adequately communicate with their teachers, tour guides, and trip sponsors to coordinate plans and activities and to ask great questions and get the answers they’re looking for.
Traveling also allows students to meet new people and network, which can be especially helpful on a trip to colleges. This helps them gain confidence and learn to interact with strangers safely and comfortably.
Interacting with hotel and restaurant staff is an important social skill that students experience on a trip. With parents not around, students will have a variety of social interactions that will start to expand their worldview.
Opportunities to gain social skills happen organically throughout a fun and inspiring tour.
Learn more about college tours with GL Travel
Creativity
Experiencing new things and ways of life can be incredibly inspirational to your students. It might spark creativity in their own lives back home.
For example, a student who loves cooking might experiment with new flavors they tasted on the trip. Or one who loves art might try to draw some of the things they saw on the trip.
You could also kick this up a notch by having your students tour the MET in New York with a docent. Your students will learn about several influential pieces and create a sketch of a painting while on tour.
You can foster creativity throughout the trip by encouraging students to use their talents and ingenuity to create something unique while they’re amidst something new.
Allow the experience to inspire a poem or journal entry that they can reflect on and use as a resource when they get back home. Some trip leaders even have their students send a postcard back home to their families.
New places and experiences are ripe for fostering creativity in trip leaders and their students.
Expands Their Comfort Zone
Everyone gets a little nervous when they travel, but this is a good thing for young people. It means their pushing out of their comfort zones to experience something new.
On a class trip, they might have to eat something they’re unsure of, speak up when they’d typically stay silent, or conquer shyness to meet new people.
On a Grad Nite Trip, students expand their comfort zones by taking thrilling rides and having fun dancing to the creative mixes of well-known DJs.
On a National Parks trip, students can experience the exhilaration of conquering fears through white water rafting and ropes courses.
All of these examples can help your students push their comfort zones a little bigger and feel more confident in these situations in the future. The best version of yourself is on the other side of your biggest challenge. So get out of your comfort zone and expand yourself through travel!
Fosters Independence
Last but not least, travel fosters independence in your students. Even though you’re there with them the whole time, the experience shows them they’re capable of going somewhere new and having a great time.
When it comes time to go off to college or take an even bigger trip, they’ll know the ins and outs of travel and be sure of their ability to go forward on their own.
Even a grad night experience can help students take control of their independence by giving them free rein over their schedule for one night.
Greater independence (through travel) is essential to a student's journey to adulthood.
How to Get Started
Getting out of the classroom and experiencing a new place can help your students gain valuable life skills.
If these sound like great attributes you’d like to instill in your students, then it’s time to start thinking about your biggest lesson yet—a class trip!
You’ll need to choose a destination, start planning, and develop a few fundraising ideas.
Luckily, you don’t have to do it all alone.
At GL Travel, we specialize in helping teachers plan memorable trips for their students. We believe in the benefits of travel and want to help you make your next class trip a reality. Reach out to us today to see what trips we offer and how we can help you get started!
