I gave a quick 10-minute class on the difference between democracy and authoritarianism to my friends. I created a quick slide show to highlight the key points: in democracies, the people vote and enjoy greater freedoms, while in an authoritarian country, power is vested on one or just a few people and the freedoms are limited. Examples included “Switzerland” and “the United States” as democracies and “China” and Russia as authoritarian countries. I wrote a worksheet with questions on it to help the group think through the material. Teaching this lesson taught me how to explain ideas clearly and how to keep people engaged in discussion. Q&A was handy since it cleared several points and made the examples effective because they made the lesson much more interesting.