Session Descriptions

Time: 0510-0600 (UTC)

Moderator: Anastasia Lijadi

Journey with us to explore the fascinating (and sometimes unsettling) world of Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Hossein Hassani will delve into AI's capabilities, highlighting its immense potential to revolutionize fields from healthcare to finance. But it doesn't shy away from the potential drawbacks, urging us to consider ethical implications and responsible development. He will unveil telltale signs of how AI is already shaping our lives, prompting critical discussions about our role in guiding this powerful technology.

Leave with a deeper understanding of:

• AI's and Emotional AI capabilities and evolution: How advanced machines are learning, adapting, and making decisions.
• The power: Unveiling the potential to solve complex problems, automate tasks, and improve our lives.
• The pitfalls: Examining potential biases, job displacement, and the need for ethical guardrails.
• Our responsibility: Exploring how we can shape the future of AI for the benefit of humanity.

Time: 0610-0705 (UTC)

Moderator: Kathleen Smith

When a transition is unplanned, we lose the time we would normally use to prepare for a change. We end up with a lot of unresolved grief and unspoken goodbyes, things we haven't had time to acknowledge and articulate, weighing us down at the same time we are trying to set up a new life. And in many cases, we launch not into a new settled life, but into a season of limbo - where we lack stability, routine, or any sense of control. Many either bury all the difficult feelings in a rush to do everything that needs doing, and some feel badly stuck. While one seems to be moving forward, both groups need support to unpack their unplanned transition and move forward in a healthy way. This session uses a personal narrative of a journey through unplanned transition to discuss practical ways to process change and move forward - for ourselves, and for those we love.

Time: 0700-0745 (UTC)

Moderator: Debbie Kamlich

Both children and adults can experience traumatizing events, that make them stuck in fear, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, broken relationships or other symptoms and behavioral patterns. But it doesn´t have to be like that. By learning about trauma and how it affets us, and by learning about what trauma recovery is, we can help each other and the children we have around us to move from trauma to safety. Stories are a beautiful tool in this process. In 2015 Ulrika started to explore and develop a trauma processing model that is so safe that also a person that is not trained in psychological treatment can offer it to family-members, colleagues and children. The model developed to be what is now called SafetyStories, and is built on research done by Bessel van der Kolk, Allan Shore, Daniel Siegel, Peter Levine and many others, combined with the human art of story telling.

Time: 0750-0835 (UTC)

Moderator: Maryam Afnan Ahmad

International schools were founded originally to serve our globally mobile lives. Today, international schools often promise to deliver diploma recipients with an internationally minded global citizenship education. About 1 in 5 global citizens are neurodivergent (have an invisible significant cognitive function difference to the middle 80% of humanity) or are physically disabled (have a physical capacity significantly varied from the middle 80% of humanity). Parents Alliance for Inclusion has been founded to advocate that international schools need to include neurodivergent and disabled children, and support them well to (1) meet their own stated global citizenship education goals and (2) because the whole child education outcomes for all children are better when neurodivergent and disabled children are included. In a world that needs adults who think outside the box and know how to empathize and relate with a multitude of human identities to gain support for broad based solutions to our man-made challenges, schools learning how to include neurodivergent and disabled children well by choice (as opposed to by legal mandate) is imperative to the shifts we need for the future of global citizenry and education. It is time to opt in to inclusion.

Time: 0835-0905 (UTC)

Moderator: Hannele Seccia

There have been many chages at FIGT over the past few years, steming from the covid period among others. Here, Board reflections on our Vision and the activities which have been taking place and where we want to go.

Time: 1405-1455 (UTC)

Moderator: Maryam Afnan Ahmad

Doesn't everyone already know what diversity looks like? Just pick any inspirational poster. Is diversity something amorphous or concrete or context specific? And who must help define diversity standards? Are dominant cultures to be tasked with defining and creating diversity learning and spaces? Or is it time to give the floor and resources to the global majority? These are a couple of Maryam Afnan's burning questions this past few years. She takes it to a panel of inspiring women of Asian origin with expat and adult third culture experiences. Join her and the panelists Myra Dumapias, Isabelle Min, San Shine and Tuba Kazmi as they talk about what diversity could potentially look like.

Time: 1500-1555 (UTC)

Moderator:  Ozlem Nolet

Increasingly, the TCK/CCK experience is more complex and nuanced than ever before. In this session, Andrea Schmitt and Megan Norton, along with panelists, describe the emerging themes of TCK/CCK transitions to boarding schools, universities, gap years, and the working world. The distinctions between TCKs and CCKs are highlighted, but are done so for clarity on what support needs to be tailored for each unique population. This session draws upon several theories and paradigms from different sectors in how to bring momentum to awareness and support for this demographic.

Time: 1600-1645 (UTC)

Moderator:  Maryam Afnan Ahmad

The UK hosts nearly two hundred different nationalities; one in three children born in England and Wales today have at least one foreign-born parent. The narrative around such diversity has been purposefully divisive over the last ten years, resulting in part to the UK exit from the EU and prompting the UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, to declare: “[Multiculturalism] has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it ….” There is another side to the story, however. Some ‘multicultural’ families haven’t so much been ‘allowed’ to lead parallel lives as they have been forcibly alienated from British systems - the very systems meant to support them, particularly when they are in crisis, and help with integration. With the increase in migration, there is an increased need for improved understanding of different cultures and countries, and how these factors impact on family life.

With growing international migration, there is a heightened need for improved understanding of different cultures and how it impacts on family life.  Without a shared understanding, children experience greater safeguarding risk and families face increased discrimination. This session will explore existing evidence of the reluctance of social service structures to adapt to other cultures and will invite experiences and solutions from attendees as a way to progress a ‘global dialogue’ about supporting families in global transition.

Time: 1650-1705 (UTC)

Moderator: Anastasia Lijadi

There is some significant hardship associated with a globally mobile life. Many of those challenges have been exacerbated following the global pandemic. Dr. McGregor spends a good deal of time validating client’s subjective emotional experiences of their pain. She thinks it is also absolutely imperative that in addition to providing validation and healing wounds, we focus on the strengths and skills associated with a globally mobile life. Drawing on our resiliency helps to build the momentum to move forward. In her presentation, she aims to address a range of issues relevant to expats (e.g. identity development, grief and loss, trauma, relational distress, belonging/rootlessness) and to focus specifically on the tremendous growth those experiences can facilitate. This presentation will be positive and empowering with a focus on grounding in your authentic self, harnessing the skill of adaptability, post traumatic growth, fostering healthy relationships, focusing on what you have control over, and seeking meaning in your life.

Time: 1735-1805 (UTC)

Moderator: Kathleen Smith