As debates around civic education intensify, educators remain essential in helping students understand democratic principles and engage thoughtfully with the world around them. This webinar will equip teachers with tools to confidently guide students through challenging conversations and strengthen democratic habits in the classroom.
Participants will explore teaching materials from the Woven Foundation’s Defending Democracy: Lessons for Building Resilience and Taking Action, a curriculum inspired by Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. These resources offer practical, adaptable strategies to help students recognize threats to democratic norms and identify constructive ways to respond.
Join us for an evening of insight, ready-to-use materials, and support for educators committed to fostering informed, empowered young citizens.
This webinar features a panel discussion with the top minds in education from around the country, including Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, who will be discussing her latest book: Why Fascists Fear Teachers.
This event is presented in partnership with the Right to Learn Coalition and the Educators’ Institute for Human Rights.
Featured Speaker
Randi Weingarten is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator. She has been president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) since 2008, and is the former president of the United Federation of Teachers. Prior to her election as AFT president, Weingarten served for 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, representing approximately 200,000 educators in the New York City public school system, and was a teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood from 1991 to 1997. In 2013, the New York Observer named Weingarten one of the most influential New Yorkers of the past 25 years. She was included in Washingtonian’s 2021 Washington’s Most Influential People, City & State New York’s 2021 New York City Labor Power 100, and in 2017 received the Roosevelt Institute’s FDR Distinguished Public Service Award.
Panelists
Meredith Baldi is a history, politics, and media literacy teacher, as well as the service-learning coordinator at George School in Newtown, PA. She is also the faculty sponsor of the student Amnesty International club. Generally, in her work at George School, her focus is on helping students understand the world around them and working with them to find experiential opportunities to be active in their communities working towards positive change.
Meredith became involved with the STTP curriculum through her IB Global Politics course, and has found the STTP video contest to be an excellent resource to help students deepen their understanding of human rights, especially the defense of human rights within their own communities. After teaching this contest for several years to great success, Meredith and fellow RFK STTP Lead Educator, Prescott Seraydarian, led a series of workshops at the RFK Summer Institute in San Diego, to help other educators understand the power of film and media to produce social change.
Inspired by the use of film and media to promote change, Meredith & Prescott developed a course at George School called Producing Peace, which is a media literacy course framed through the lens of peace and justice. They have also co-developed a course called Storytelling for Social Justice, which involves bringing students to Greece to volunteer directly in support of the refugee crisis.
Joseph (“Joe”) Nappi is in his 20th year teaching social studies at Monmouth Regional High School, where he also advises the Key Club, serves on the Equity Council, and chairs the Monmouth Helping Its Own charitable committee he co-founded. A Museum Teacher Fellow with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he helped develop lessons for Ken Burns’s The U.S. and the Holocaust and is collaborating with the Smithsonian on an educational poster project highlighting Jewish contributions to American History. Centering his classroom on the charge to “Be the Change,” Joe empowers students to lead philanthropic work locally and globally. He has received numerous honors for his teaching including being named the 2023–24 New Jersey State Teacher of the Year, one of four finalists for the 2024 National Teacher of the Year, he was named Facing History and Ourselves’ 2024 Upstander of the Year and was selected as one of four teachers from across the nation to receive the 2025 Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence.