When WTTW set out to document democracy in the Chicago area, the first place they looked was not a City Hall or a ballot box. They walked into a classroom at Evanston Township High School.

Miten Patel, who has taught AP United States Government and Politics at ETHS for 16 years, is the subject of one of five short documentaries in WTTW’s “Firsthand: Democracy” series, which premiered in February. The series profiles Chicagoland volunteers, immigrants, organizers and educators who, in their daily lives, work to sustain democratic participation in the country.

For Patel, that work begins the moment students walk through the door. ETHS, he says, draws an unusually politically engaged student body (especially in his classes), which makes his job easier.

“I have students coming into class talking about things that I don’t even have on my radar,” Mr. Patel said. “They’re teaching me, they’re informing me.”

That dynamic shapes Patel’s approach to the thorniest questions in civic life. When students ask who is right or wrong on class-contested political questions, he resists the easy answer, showing instead how the U.S. Constitution and its competing interpretations underlie most of our current political debates. 

“Before walking into this class, I really lacked a deep understanding of the undercurrents of U.S. politics,” said sophomore Ben Ojala. “However, Mr. Patel dives so deeply into his lessons and has helped me understandably digest such a complicated system.”

That outcome, Ojala suggests, is less about political optimism and more about understanding. Students who grasp how the political system actually functions – its design, its tensions, its immense amount of competing values- are less likely to mistake its messiness for failure.

Ask Patel which civic issue he wishes his students paid more attention to, and he does not hesitate: voter turnout among young people. It is a gap that cuts close to home in Evanston and the United States as a whole:  Political engagement runs high in classroom discussions but does not always translate to the polls.

Patel’s path to the classroom was anything but direct. Born in London and raised in Rogers Park before his family moved to Palatine, he graduated from DePaul and went on to work at JPMorgan Chase and then Fortune magazine. Only after those many years in business did he pivot to teaching, drawn by the example of educators who had refused to give up on him.

“I wasn’t the best student, and I think that’s a kind way to put it. The teachers that I had just never gave up.”

The WTTW documentary captures  that same refusal to let students disengage from the current political conversation. 

Patel’s film is the first of five in the series, and the other four subjects illuminate the many entry points to democratic life that exist beyond the classroom. Maryanne Colter, the Illinois state coordinator for Braver Angels, facilitates workshops aimed at reducing toxic partisanship, not by changing people’s views on the issues, but by changing how they see one another. Isabel Aguilar immigrated to Chicago from Mexico 23 years ago, became a naturalized citizen, and now volunteers as a tutor for other immigrants. Camille Williams channels a traumatic childhood, her mother was murdered when she was six, into a mission to secure voting rights for incarcerated people. And Julee Mortensen, a 72-year-old suburban grandmother, keeps a packed “resistance calendar” of weekly protests, living by a single conviction: democracy does not retire.

“Young people…are the fuel for democracy,” he said. “They’re the ones that are going to inherit it and keep it going.”