Meet five incredible educators in celebration of World Teachers’ Day 2022
Happy World Teachers’ Day to educators everywhere 🥳 We’re so thankful for the continued hard work and passion you bring every day—both to the classroom and out in the world. To celebrate, we’re sharing five of our favorite educator profiles from this past year of transformative travel.
01
Cheryl gained the confidence to lead her first student tour
Cheryl, a resource teacher from Indiana, spent four days with 40 other brand-new Group Leaders on a springtime EF Paris tour. While this teacher travel program helped Cheryl learn what to expect on her upcoming student tour, she also broke baguettes with new friends and embraced joie de vivre by exploring the Latin Quarter, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, and more.
Read Cheryl’s training tour diary
02
Edith saw her students grow on tour—in real time
We joined Edith, a world geography teacher, on her student tour to Washington D.C. & New York. For many of her travelers, this was their very first trip outside of Texas. Coming from a low-income school, she says it’s rare for her students to even think about travel, let alone believe they can go—and this was a mindset she was determined to change.
As they explored our nation’s capital and “The Big Apple,” Edith saw her students making connections between what they were learning on tour and their in-classroom lessons. She also watched them develop greater independence, learn how to budget, and manage their belongings. While Edith hopes her students will travel again with her while they’re still in school, she’s even more excited knowing these experiences will set them up with a lifelong love of travel that they’ll be able to fulfill on their own.
Watch Edith’s on-tour reflections
03
Jason turns his Global Rewards Points into much-deserved getaways
Educators (like you!) do so much for your students every day, and EF’s Global Rewards Program is our way of recognizing, thanking, and celebrating you—on World Teachers’ Day 2022 and beyond.
When Jason, a high school assistant principal, first started leading his students on EF tours in 2010, he used his Global Rewards Points to book guilt-free fun for himself. This meant saying yes to more 36-hour whirlwind adventures with his friends and family. Fun fact: He hasn’t paid for a plane ticket since he started partnering with EF.
As Jason led more tours and earned more points, he booked spots for him and his wife on a teacher-only VIP Rewards Tour to Amsterdam. EF planned everything for their travel group so they could really absorb the life, culture, food, and history that surrounded them—much like Jason’s own student travelers when he leads them on tour. Up next, he’s in the process of planning his and his wife’s next dream vacation with EF (they have their eyes on Tel Aviv or Dubai!).
EF will allow you to do things and go places you didn’t think were possible as an educator.
04
Travel helps fuel Stephanie’s passion for teaching
Stephanie, a Spanish teacher, took her students on an EF tour to Spain this summer. We caught up with her while she was there, and she told us about how showing her students the world keeps her passion for teaching burn bright.
Teaching has always been an incredibly challenging job, but the past few years have been unlike anything else. And Stephanie says you simply can’t be a teacher in this day and age unless you absolutely love what you do. That’s one of the reasons why she keeps taking her students abroad. Because between seeing them practice their Spanish in real-world situations, broaden their cultural connections and understanding, and grow as more confident, independent, and empathetic human beings, traveling perfectly encapsulates all the reasons why she wanted to become a teacher in the first place.
Explore more of Stephanie’s takeaways
05
Mitch believes travel benefits the whole community
Mitch knows that travel plays a pivotal role in helping students grow into global citizens. So as a school administrator, he recognizes that teachers who want to lead educational tours need and deserve to feel supported.
That’s one of the reasons why Mitch believes it’s important to offer a travel program at the district level. It builds trust in the community, proving that the school system doesn’t just talk the talk when it comes to expanding students’ growth and development through new experiences. Instead, by providing students with opportunities to see the world, helping them find ways to make the trip more affordable, and sometimes even leading the tours themselves, the administrators are—often quite literally—walking the walk.
EF One on One
If you’d like to explore even more educator stories beyond World Teachers’ Day 2022, check out our EF One on One series. Teachers from opposite sides of the educational travel spectrum come together and talk openly about the experiences, impact, and excitement of leading student travel.