Content Warning: This article and the podcast mentioned is very upfront about suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression and anxiety.

Recently the podcast Heavily Pixelated featured an episode on Simon and Abi, a father and daughter who live in New York City (originating from the UK). The episode focuses on the power of a mutual activity and shared goals that helped the parents of Abi as they recovered from her bouts of depression, an admission of suicidal thoughts and an attempt to take her own life.

Read more: Depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation - one student's and her parents' experience

Back in 2016, I began a monthly Twitter chat using the hashtag #HASSchat. It took place on the last Thursday of every month at 7:30pm and had a different focus every month. Some topics included technology in HASS, literacy in HASS, and innovation in HASS. It enjoyed moderate success, with educators from around Australia taking part. In 2017, I made the decision to convert the Twitter chat into a podcast with the intention of reaching a wider audience, and allowing educators to access professional learning whenever, and wherever they want, and it launched in January of 2018 (taken from Cimino, M. (2019). The Role of Podcasts in HASS Teaching and Learning. Professional Educator, 20(1), 74.)

Read more: Oh, the Humanities! (and Social Sciences): Podcasts for Practice

BBC's The Documentary Podcast has varied topics, but a few episodes look at education issues.

One such episode os Destination Education released on 18 June 2019. It can be accessed here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07dd9qv

The episode is presented by Liyang Liu and follows the stories of two Chinese children who travel to attend private boarding schools in the UK. Over six months Liu documents their feelings and experiences of being a student in a foreign country.

When listening to this podcast, we recommend reflecting on the experiences and wellbeing of students who are attending schools in Australia and whose main support family are located overseas. The content might also generally prompt you to think about the teaching and wellbeing strategies that would need to be put in place to ensure that these students feel safe as well as able to access what is often a very different education philosophy and process to what they are used to in their country of origin.

We recommend this exercise could be Teacher Identified PD addressing Standard Descriptors 4.4.2 (wellbeing) and 1.3.2 (diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socio-economic backgrounds).

This is an on-going series that covers different topics each episode. Hosted by physicist and science communicator Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince, I’m recommending the episode ‘Teenage Brain’ released 30 Jan 2018.

Read more: The Infinite Monkey Cage