Trips That Enrich Teachers and Their Students Too

I’m glad to bring the overworked and underpaid American teacher some good news for a change. A 22-year-old Boston-based company, ACIS (American Council for International Studies), makes a business of funding teachers’ trips abroad when they take several paying students along.

For the kids, the trips are reasonably priced, considering everything that’s provided, which includes air fare (on regular flights, not charters), all land transportation at the destination (including extras such as Chunnel trains), entrance fees, breakfasts and dinners, insurance and accommodations in the same three- or four-star hotels used by mainstream tour operators. Best of all, the trips are led by a well-educated, 24-hour guide (usually British) who accompanies the tour from start to finish so that teachers don’t have to be leaders so much as chaperons.

Going on a tour doesn’t just enrich the lives of students. (At 15, one of my associates took his first trip to Europe on an ACIS trip led by an English teacher, and he now writes about travel as a career.) Teachers also win. Many of them otherwise couldn’t afford overseas tours, but because educators bring ACIS its business, they earn a raft of special breaks, including:

* Free travel on the trip. First-timers have to take at least five students to qualify for a free trip.

* Free additional trips when 12 or more students are booked.

* Cash stipends for every participant booked after six people. For example, if a teacher takes 11 people on a tour that costs $1,100, he or she travels free and also receives $525.

* Options for academic credit for teachers who take trips.

* A 20% discount for family members. Teachers with children younger than 12 get $150 more off for each of them.

* A 20% discount for adults who come as additional chaperons.

* Free single rooms for teachers who take eight or more people.

Although these benefits might seem suspect, they are no racket, and prices are fair for the stewardship provided.

An eight-night, fully guided tour taking in Amsterdam, Paris and London costs $1,659 per person from Los Angeles. Prices are lowest from October to March, which is best for teachers and students alike because school breaks usually fall within that time frame.

The company’s most popular itineraries are basic European highlights tours, but there are more advanced selections. These include a 13-day safari through the Tanzanian Serengeti, 16 nights in eastern China or two weeks at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Sydney and New Zealand’s North Island.

ACIS is wise to in-school politics, so it furnishes occasional scholarships and fund-raising ideas to enable students to earn the money for their trips. The company can also arrange course credit in certain summer-abroad study programs. And it edits the quarterly Educational Travel Review, a newsletter by and for teachers.

Some readers might find it distasteful that I suggest that teachers profit from their students’ trips. I would respond, politely, that if our cities and states are not going to pay our children’s role models adequately, the least those role models can do is make things possible for themselves. Besides, the fellowship and stimulation of a trip abroad is just the sort of education that does both student and teacher a world of good.

ACIS, telephone (800) 888-2247, has a well-developed Web site, https://www.acis.com, which includes full descriptions of the trips, frequent specials and quick, automated price quoting.