Exploring Beyond the Classroom and Beyond Textbooks to Optimize Your Teaching

Teacher taking USD's Travel, Learn, Teach Series courses visiting a museum while looking for teacher resources to use in her classroomMany valuable educational resources are within reach, and even more opportunities are available through increasing one’s circle by adventuring outside of the city where you live. Invigorate your teaching with explorations either within your community or beyond. Bring your discoveries back to the classroom to inspire students to learn more and become lifelong learners through exploring. These courses allow you to become motivated to turn your travels, actual or virtual, into creative learning enhancements that allow students to make real world connections. Each course requires either creating a new lesson plan or augmenting a current one that combines your newfound knowledge or materials.  Teacher resources abound from visits to museums, national or state parks, memorials, presidential libraries, local businesses, cultural learning centers, and even from online sources. Turn your actual or virtual travels into more rewarding experiences with purposeful learning for the classroom!

Three courses available, that can be taken multiple times with a new location each time:

  • Travel, Learn, Teach:  Exploring Community Resources for Learning (1-unit)
  • Travel, Learn, Teach:  Exploring National Resources for Learning (1-unit)
  • Travel, Learn, Teach:  Exploring International Resources for Learning (1-unit)

It is highly recommended to enroll for the course prior to embarking on your visit/travel, so that all assignments can be completed.

Who Should Attend

K-14 educators who want to incorporate regional/national/world travel and/or community resources into their teaching to enhance student learning and motivate lifelong learning will benefit from these courses.

Program Details

Enroll in one or more of the three category courses (community/national/international), using a different destination for each enrollment, signing up for the first course within the category and then the next numbered course for subsequent enrollments.

  • Recognize how your community and/or travel learning aligns with teaching standards
  • Rejuvenate or add to content knowledge in a particular subject matter by visiting resourceful locations
  • Research and add primary resources and experiences into the classroom
  • Design or augment a lesson plan that incorporates newly discovered teaching resources to complement curriculum
  • Document your visit/travel learning
  • Use explorational resources to promote lifelong learning and travel with students
“I have taken five USD Travel, Learn, Teach courses, aside from other USD educational courses. I found this series to be especially useful to me as a hospitality educator. I love to travel! This series allow me to maximize my travels and turned my travel experiences into lesson plans for my high school CTE hospitality and tourism classes. I really like this course work because I get to relive my experiences all over when I carefully document/reflect what I have learned during my travels. My photo essay helps my students to see these foreign countries vicariously. I use USD graduate credits for my professional development, which in turn helps me in my annual faculty evaluation. USD Travel, Learn, Teach courses are a win-win for educators!” -- Eric Chong, High School and College Level Educator, Guam

Additional Details

Courses

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