Terms of Award

Securing comfortable living arrangements in your host country is a vital part of a positive exchange experience.  U.S. and international teachers are required to assist one another in finding housing during the exchange.

For programs in France, Switzerland, or the UK, U.S. teachers and their partners usually exchange housing, since housing in Western Europe is very expensive and difficult to find and arrange. 

For programs in the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, and Mexico, U.S. teachers receive maintenance allowances to defray the costs of renting an apartment.  In certain circumstances, teachers who exchange to these countries may opt to exchange housing.

Fulbright recommends that U.S. teachers follow the options listed below, in order of priority, when making housing arrangements with their exchange partner:

1.    Exchange partners agree to find one another temporary housing for a week to ten days upon arrival in the host country.  Then with the help of the mentor teacher or others in the host community, the exchange teacher can look for more permanent housing, taking into consideration the cost, location, size, transportation logistics to school and to shopping, etc. Each teacher would sign a lease in his or her name with a landlord in the host city.

2.    Prior to travel to the host country, the U.S. teacher searches for his/her own housing on the open market, with guidance from the exchange partner.  Exchange partners can share photos and rental advertisements.   Each teacher would sign a lease in his or her name with a landlord in the host city.

If exchange partners choose to exchange housing, they should go into the arrangement with flexibility, open communication, and a detailed housing contract.

Teachers are not advised to accept an exchange of housing unless the accommodations will be unoccupied.  U.S. teachers who are trading residences with their partners are required to clean the premises and leave the premises in a completely repaired condition. 

In cases where one teacher’s housing is provided free of charge, he or she may be asked to share in the partner’s housing costs.

The ultimate responsibility for finding suitable accommodations rests with each individual exchange teacher.

The Fulbright program reserves the right to request termination of an exchange should housing issues significantly affect how the professional exchange is conducted.  Any problems arising from a housing situation into which an individual teacher has entered are the sole responsibility of the teacher and not of the Fulbright program.

• increased understanding of host country, language, and academic field;
  
• opportunity for a career-enhancing professional development experience which allows teachers to gain new perspectives, be exposed to new teaching methods, develop new curricula, and to share professional expertise;
• opportunity to develop lifelong friendships and professional relationships and to become a member of an international community of Fulbrighters;
• additional benefit to accompanying family members, who get to live or go to school in a different cultural environment.

• increased global awareness on part of students taught by international exchange teachers and by the returning Fulbright teacher;
• increased knowledge and international awareness on the part of professional colleagues through interactions with exchange teachers;
• opportunity for students to learn foreign languages from native speakers;
• development of a long-term professional relationship between the U.S. and the foreign school, which can lead to student and teacher collaboration and privately arranged teacher exchanges, student linkages, and future student exchanges

Benefits to Communities:

• presence of an international teacher and his or her family as resources in the community, providing the whole community the opportunity to learn of another nation;
  
• opportunity for increased awareness of diversity of ideas, values, world views, and ways of life.