Money for Nothing: Educators, Time to Rethink Your Summer Plans

Credit: Mark Wagoner

You could spend your summer cleaning out closets or lounging by the pool, but where's the fun in that? You're better off training your brain -- free, if at all possible. 100 Paid Summer Adventures for Teachers can get you started.

This nifty little tome details fellowships across the world and includes the info you need to apply. You'll be inspired to encourage your inner detective and create a mock crime scene at the DNA Forensic Science Curriculum for High School Teachers, in Storrs, Connecticut. Or, if you're awarded the S. Buford Scott New York Stock Exchange Scholarship, you can head to the Big Apple to learn about the math behind stock selection so you can train the budding brokers in your classroom. And, if you're feeling shorthanded, learn to grow new body parts through the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative's Teacher Education Program.

Especially enticing are the lavish fellowships that seem like pure vacation: a Fulbright fellowship to Japan for three weeks; a Classical Association of New England study program that sends Latin teachers from New England to Greece or Italy for the summer; and the British Universities Summer School Scholarship, which sponsors San Francisco drama teachers to study Shakespearean plays in England. If these all seem too narrowly targeted, however, the Indiana Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program will give you up to $8,000 to make up a project of your very own. Past recipients studied literature in Australia and fine-tuned their appreciation for wrought iron in Italy.

Should you want to dedicate your time to learning lacunae, however, check out Arizona's Summer Institute on Medical Ignorance for a rundown of how little our authority figures really know. Though it's unsettling, you will be able to teach your students useful skills in skepticism and problem evaluation. Everybody has to grow up sometime. In the meantime, get planning; applications tend to be due in the spring. Tempus fugit.

The Goods

100 Paid Summer Adventures for Teachers
Jill Frankfort
Publisher Benefit Press/173 pages/$20
www.benefitpress.com [1]