All-Expenses-Paid Study Tours for Teachers
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In October 2007 I went to the Galapagos for two weeks, courtesy of the Toyota Motor Sales corporation. It was an amazing trip - seeing wildlife, island hopping, meeting with Galapagos teachers and visiting Galapagos schools. Some of the teachers I went with do this sort of thing all the time. It turns out there a lot of similar programs out there that will send a teacher overseas for free. Here are some that I've learned about:
Since someone else is paying, you need to have a strong rationale for how the trip will help your students learn.
The Toyota International Teacher Program sends teachers overseas to Costa Rica and the Galapagos. The focus is on environmental issues.
The Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program is more than just a study tour - you actually trade places with a foreign teacher for a year, a semester or six weeks. However, they also offer Classics Summer Seminars in Italy and Greece, and non-simultaneous administrator exchanges.
The U.S. Department of Education administers the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad. Most of these are for social studies, humanities and language teachers but there is one in India for math and science teachers.
The Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program goes to Japan
(Note: all three "Fulbright" Programs listed here are quite distinct from each other!)
The Earthwatch Institute offers fellowships to teachers on many of their expeditions in the field. You generally have to pay your own airfare, they pay the rest.
The National Endowment for the Humanities offers many Summer Seminars and Institutes overseas for school teachers.
PolarTREC sends teachers to the Arctic and to Antarctica. The focus is on science.
NASA's Spaceward Bound sends teachers to extreme environments like deserts, mountaintops, and the arctic to participate in astrobiology/ Mars analog field camps.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Teacher at Sea program places teachers on oceanographic vessels.
The ARMADA Project administered by the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography places also places K-12 teachers on oceanographic vessels. The focus is on ocean, polar, and environmental science research and peer mentoring.
The Goethe Institute sends social studies teachers to Germany.
The Korean Studies Workshop for American Educators sends social studies teachers to Korea.
Aramco sends social social studies teachers and librarians to Saudi Arabia.
The Fund for Teachers gives grants for self-designed summer sabbaticals, but not all school districts are eligible. Mine is not.
A lot of the programs listed above are administered by the Institute of International Education, regardless of who's paying the bill. So, it pays to get to know this organization.