Teacherland Lessons

The lessons I have learned and the lessons I have taught in my years abroad as an international school teacher

  • Small Spider Webs All At Once! A Less-Than-Formal Approach to Classroom Discussions

    I love having discussion in my classroom but I always struggle with forced and ingenuine classroom discussion. You know what I’m taking about if you have taught secondary school. Either students don’t want to talk or partake in anyway or they know they are being graded so they put on a show and are very…

  • Dissect a Lesson: California Gold Rush

    Disclaimer: this lesson is available for purchase over on TPT but this blog post goes into enough detail that you could build this lesson on your own if you wanted to put the work in to make it. I’ve been out of the classroom and into the playroom for 10 months now (my baby was…

  • Teaching American History to Non-Americans (and my philosophy of education)

    What’s your sales pitch on the first day of school? Do you try to package your course for your new students the year starts or do you let them figure it out as you go along? As a teacher in an American international school who is tasked with teaching American History to non-Americans, its almost…

  • Welcome to Teacherland

    Teacherland (n): my classroom, a sovereign state ruled by a benevolent dictator 😉 Hi, I’m Devin and I am a social studies teacher. Teaching my kids how a government works can be tricky but forming my own country has made the process a bit goofy but very memorable. I started my teaching career in middle…

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What is Teacherland?

As a history teacher, I often have to explain different forms and functions of the government. To help illustrate to my students, I like to refer to my room as Teacherland. They soon find that Teacherland is not a democracy. No, no, this is a dictatorship run by a benevolent Queen. 😉 My students have lovingly dubbed me Dictator Devin. 

I grew up in the American public school system but moved to teach abroad early into my career as a teacher. I have 9 years teaching experience in an American international school in Bangkok, Thailand. I’ve taken a pause from teaching to be a stay at home mom but my husband continues to teach at a British international school in Bangkok. In the upcoming months, we will be going on our next big adventure as our family moves to Brazil and he begins teaching at an international school in Rio de Janeiro.

Devin Arenas

International School Teacher