The topics of conversation will include:

 

• School activities (academics, sports, arts, music, dance, theatre)

• Interests/hobbies

• International events (e.g., those reported in newspapers or discussed at Model United Nations Conferences)

• Global challenges (e.g., poverty, conflict, and environment, including from such sources as The Economist, National Geographic)

• Solutions to global challenges

• Social innovation/social entreprenuership (new ways of addressing old problems based, e.g., on literarture by Bill Drayton’s Ashoka, which focuses on making “everyone a changemaker” and demonstrates how each one of us can drive social change and lead meaningful lives)

• Inspirational stories relating to the lives of World leaders (e.g., Churchill, Gandhi, Martin Luther King)

• Motivational quotes (e.g., “It is better to have failed than not to have tried,” “Tomorrow begins today”)

• Inspirational books (e.g., “Gifted Hands” by Ben Carson) with the opportunity to also form book clubs

• Learned optimism and positive psychology (e.g., literature based on learned optimism by Prof. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania which teaches how to react to events in ways that enhance ones confidence in one’s own abilities rather than giving-up)