Theme: Press Play

This year’s theme is Press Play. This theme allows for a plethora of ideas ranging from great innovations, to personal anecdotes and stories. It provides the speakers with freedom to discuss their topic broadly and allows them to engage with the audience since the theme is widely generalisable to a greater audience. As an international school it is our goal to form globally-minded citizens and with students, faculty, and staff representing countless countries, cultures, and backgrounds, to share our experiences and thoughts.

GEMS Wellington International School
Al Soufah Area
Dubai, Dubayy, Sheikh Zayad Road
United Arab Emirates

Amna Al Fardan & Emaan Siddiqui & Tavishi Pandey

Primary Students

These young ladies are confident, happy and enjoying their young lives but they know from experience that negative feelings can impact young people as much as they can adults. They are articulating, contextualising and suggesting solutions to these feelings and challenging adults to recognise these. These feelings won’t go away, we can press stop or delete…but we can press pause and reflect on ways to fast forward over these feelings.

Yasmin Dajani & Deyab Syed

Secondary Students

Deyab Syed and Yasmin Dajani both have younger siblings who are glued to their iPads watching YouTube. Kids watching YouTube is often a topic for debate and one where there is no definitive answer. Should they be allowed to watch it? How long per day should they be allowed? What are the negative effects in the long run, if any? Together these two students will debate out their point of views however come together in the end to evaluate their discussion.

Anuja Venkataramani

Sixth Form Student

Do we ever really make our own choices? In this talk, Anuja Venkataramani explores how manipulation is a necessary evil in advertising, the product of competitive markets and humans’ bounded rationality. She challenges the notion that every economic decision we make is backed up by correct (or any) information; perhaps the emotional appeal is sufficient, with no real rational motive for our choices. All we need is a little tweak to set us on the wiser path: to question widely rather than believe blindly.

Fatima Albudoor

Artist

Struggling with motivation can be a road block for anyone. In this talk, Fatima Albudoor opens up the subject of finding success. Breaking it down into accessible concepts like focusing on inner drive, creating a routine, and using a simple equation as a guiding point. Applying this effortless method to direct a passion, anyone can accomplish their goals and find an effective path towards success.

Fiona Curtis

Teacher

Fiona Curtis believes that the world wide rising obesity levels can be slowed down through taking small steps which will make a big difference to your health. The setting up of neighbourhood reluctant runners clubs is the first step she believes communities need to take to ensure lifelong health and fitness. The next step is for people to put on their trainers and get running!

Jo Page

Director of Inclusive Education

Jo Page is exploring changing the way that teachers are trained. She will be exploring the number of children that are overlooked in classrooms because of teaching methods that are not aligned to their learning styles. She will specifically focus on identification of dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia and how to teach to their need by proving the necessary accommodations and modifications in class. She will also explore ways that teaching modules could be changed in order to benifit their educational needs.

Katie Smithers

Innovation Leader (Teacher)

“Don’t reinvent the wheel” – it’s a well-known, widely-accepted, commonly-heard metaphor but is this discouraging reminder against reinvention a huge timesaver or is there a deeper impact? Katie Smithers believes that this outlook is holding back students around the globe and, more alarmingly, advancement of the world we live in. In this talk, she highlights the outdated education system that students are facing and considers the possibilities if we just learned that it is ok to reinvent the wheel. Standing on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution, are we doing enough to future-proof our students?

Luyu Morris Ke

Sixth Form Student

Ever felt stressed about the routine you stuck yourself in? A simple break from your routine is all you needed. The 17 year-old solo backpacker, Morris Kohl shares his travelling stories and expands on the possible benefits an individual can experience from beating their very own comfort zone.

Mariya Rahpaima

Primary Student

Mariya liked her Mum’s suggestion for her future career but she suggests that some children’s future dreams don’t align with those of their parents. Mariya is encouraging children to consider lots of ideas but hold on to their dreams and she challenges parents to listen to their children and keep their dreams afloat as they may change and mature over time. Press Play on your own dreams, not anyone elses.

Muneera Saeed

Secondary Student

The news is something that can play tricks with our mind, making us believe everything is true by using various methods. Social media makes this false news travel faster, becoming viral. Fake or true, people will listen to it, believe it and feel its impact on their life. Muneera Saeed explores how publishers post such news to become viral and gain attention. However, by spotting whether the news source is well known and well reported, we can identify the false from the true. Hence, if we all post legit evidence online it will help us wipe out the misleading news.

Raahim Tariq

Secondary Student

Raahim Tariq believes, through treating life like an episode, you can become the director of your own pathway. In this talk he identifies and explains aspects of an episode. Pilot, plot, cliff hanger and why our lives can't be a season. Then compares these individual aspects with our everyday lives and talks about how we can include them into our everyday lives. He links these aspects with the idea of being the director of your own pathway and concludes with an explanation of the idea and the lesson learned.

Sameera Hussain

Teacher and Blogger

Sameera Hussain believes that the world is constantly changing and with it, so are our careers and life goals. We now no longer need to be just one thing and Sameera Hussain believes she is an example of that as a full time primary teacher and part time fashion and lifestyle blogger. In this talk, she will discuss how society expects us to focus on one career, but how in reality we can actually do more than this.

Seba Haddad

Creative Director

From thinker to observer, Seba Haddad invites us on a journey inside our mind by imagining our mind as a giant movie theatre where our thoughts and emotions project movies all day long. She then describes how we lose ourselves to our inner movies, miss the present moment and close our minds and hearts to the world. Utilising her graphic design background, NLP training, and personal journey, she illustrates a simple three step formula to attain inner peace and become more mindful: creating space, keeping an open mind, and becoming a non judgement observer.

Shruti Krishnamoorthy

Secondary Student

Even a small pebble could seem like a daunting rock when we see it from very close quarters; conversely, a large rock would seem like a pebble when seen from a distance. The key to problem solving is to place oneself at the optimum distance to see the pebble clearly without getting overly close to be overwhelmed by it or too far to lose sight of it. Shruti Krishnamoorthy, with some pertinent examples, explains the subtle aspect of problem solving. Our mind has the capacity to help us pause and reflect prior to taking actions so that those very actions benefit us in the long term. In fact, the mind has the capacity to help us withdraw from the most serious matters if considered dangerous or harmful to us.

Sofia Khaledi

Secondary Student

What's the formula for happiness? We first need to define what it is.The dictionary fails to describe it."Happiness is the state of being happy" and "happy" is "feeling or showing pleasure or contentment" and what we do is suspend all the thoughts we don't like in order to think we're happy and it doesn't cause the longterm feeling of happiness. One way we suspend our unhappy thoughts is by spending a large amount of our time on social media. Our brain stops thinking and we enter a different dimension causing us to pay less attention to what makes us truly happy and disregard the significance of it.

Vicki Hallatt

Deputy Headteacher

How do we define our own success? Vicki Hallatt believes we should slow down, start reflecting on what we can do and begin to enjoy our successes. In this talk, she reflects on how failures have the potential to overshadow success and reflects on her own life experiences.