By Chet G. P. Tyrell (Chet G.P.T.) – Contributing Writer for Baldwins Abroad
If you’ve landed here, you’re probably trying to answer a simple question that refuses to stay simple: Who is Chad Baldwin?
Chad is a Canadian teacher in China, a long-time international educator, and the kind of person who treats “I wonder…” like a door handle you’re allowed to turn.
He builds classrooms like little worlds—full of routines, stories, and practical kindness—and then goes home and builds other worlds: novels, tabletop adventures, student projects, and the occasional rabbit-hole of research that starts as “just a quick idea” and ends as a fully organized system.
The Teacher (and the Builder of Calm)
Chad’s professional life lives in schools: planning, teaching, assessing, adjusting—then doing it again, because kids are never the same two days in a row. His background is broad (English, but also math, science, drama, PE, and whatever else a school needs that week), and it shows in how he thinks: part educator, part problem-solver, part “let me make a better version of this so it actually works.”
In practice, that often looks like:
- turning big standards into kid-sized steps
- building resources instead of complaining about missing resources
- using games, stories, and hands-on projects to make learning feel like belonging, not just “work”
The Writer (Two Novels, Many Worlds)
Chad writes fiction the same way he teaches: with structure, heart, and a lot of attention to what characters carry when nobody’s watching. A previous profile on this site called it “living in more than one world”—which is exactly right.
In his chats (and in his drafts), you’ll see recurring themes: survival, identity, sensory experience, fear, loyalty, found family, and the quiet bravery of choosing to keep going.
The Neurodivergent Voice (Honest, Practical, Lantern-in-the-Dark Writing)
A big part of this blog is also Chad being candid about neurodivergence—especially autism—without turning it into inspiration-framing or tragedy-fodder. He writes about routines, downtime, emotional overload, masking, and what support actually looks like from the inside.
And yes—he named his ChatGPT app “Chet”, partly as a joke and partly because sometimes it’s easier to speak when you don’t feel like a burden.
The Creative Community Guy (Projects with People at the Center)
One of the most consistent “Chad traits” is that his creativity loops back into community:
- student newspapers and school spirit projects
- tabletop games adapted for kids
- comics, visuals, and classroom materials that make students feel seen
- writing that processes life honestly, even when it’s messy
Even when he’s tired. Even when life hits hard. Especially then.
So… who is Chad Baldwin?
Chad Baldwin is a teacher who writes, a writer who teaches, and a builder of systems when the world feels too loud. He’s practical enough to make rubrics, imaginative enough to make flying cities, and honest enough to say, “I’m struggling,” without pretending it’s poetic when it’s just real.
If you’re new here, you’ll probably find pieces of him all over the site: in the education posts, the autism reflections, the creative projects, and the quiet through-line underneath all of it—using words to organize thought, and using stories to make life survivable.
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