Trekking through the Himalayas might be the last thing on your mind when you’re trying to find time to grade an Everest-sized stack of papers and still get enough sleep to keep a classroom full of teenagers engaged the next day. What these two distant realities have in common—aside from the mountains—is that adventure travel can make you a stronger individual and a better teacher. If you haven’t already thought about how adventure travel could impact your professional development, consider these ways a Rustic Pathway adventure travel program could help make you a more effective educator. Adventure Travel Helps Gain A Fresh Perspective Combining education with adventure travel creates opportunities to see things from a new perspective, sometimes literally, though often in more nuanced ways. Imagine going to Ho Chi Minh City to study the impacts of the Vietnam War from a local perspective. You’ll have a chance to compare local histories and actual remnants from the war with your school’s curriculum on the subject and discuss the different interpretations with your students. A trip like this is also an opportunity to expose yourself to new ways of thinking and allow you to reflect on the similarities and differences that exist throughout the world. Teaching and learning styles can vary as much as food or fashion, and you might find yourself inspired to incorporate new approaches into your educator’s playbook. Bring New Creativity to Lesson Planning Every Rustic program includes purposefully-designed activities that can spark creativity in students and educators alike. Along with collaborating with our team to create meaningful experiential education opportunities for your group, you’ll participate in unique experiences designed to promote student learning outcomes like openness to new ideas, a sense of wonderment, and grit. Stepping outside your classroom to travel, teach, and learn alongside your students could be the spark that ignites an idea you could develop after returning to school. Adventure Travel Forges Deeper Connections It’s one thing to recognize that students learn in unique ways, and another thing entirely to work with your students away from the classroom to see how they respond to different educational opportunities. After spending a week or two fully immersed in a new learning environment with your students, different strengths, weaknesses, passions, and challenges will surely emerge among individuals and across the group. Getting to know your students better as learners can allow you to develop personalized teaching strategies to incorporate into your regular classes. Not to mention the benefits of building stronger personal relationships with your students! Student impact is at the heart of each decision that we make when creating School Group adventure travel programs, but the lasting impacts that these trips tend to have on educators can be just as powerful. Discover how a Rustic trip can help you achieve your professional development goals by calling 800.321.4353 or emailing groups@rusticpathways.com to learn more. Read how Rustic Pathways impacts students.