Crisis help

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Support

Everything your team needs to lead, ready to use.

Who: counselors and teachers Time: about five and a half hours per grade per year, mostly in 25-minute blocks.

You get: The area guideThe area lessonsSix fixed pieces for every grade

The team works with the grade using ready-to-use guides and lessons for that area, plus the fixed pieces every grade receives.

Area guide

Connecting

What Connecting is, how it shows up in a grade, and what helps.

Read the full guide

For the school counseling team.

What it is. The ability to build trusting relationships, ask for help, resolve disagreements and care for others.

Why it weighs so much in adolescence. Relationships among peers are a support and can also be a risk. Asking an adult for help is often hard. And the online world changed conflicts: many start in a group chat and continue in the classroom.

What it looks like in a group at "Start here":

  • Conflicts that escalate into fights or exclusions.
  • Kids who say they have no one to talk to.
  • Closed groups that don't let others in.
  • Conflicts that come from social media and show up in class.

What doesn't help. Solving it for them, punishing without repairing, or ignoring what happens on social media.

What does help. Identifying adults they can turn to, practicing how to ask for and offer help, building group agreements and opening spaces for repair.

Area lessons: "The thread".

Area lesson

The thread

Asking for help is not weakness. 80 minutes, or two 40-minute sessions; being adapted to 25-minute sessions.

Read the full lesson
AreaAgeLengthLed byMaterials
Connecting12 to 1880 min (or two 40-minute sessions)Counseling team or teacherA ball of yarn, sheets of paper, pencils, poster paper, markers, blank cards

Goal. For the group to consider that asking for help is not weakness, to recognize who they can lean on, and to tell apart the relationships that care from the ones that harm.

Core idea for the person leading. No one gets out of the labyrinth alone: asking for the thread is also a way of being strong. The whole workshop comes back to that sentence.

Before the workshop
  • Get a ball of yarn and prepare a sheet of paper for each student.
  • Plan the groups ahead of time (4 or 5 per group), mixing students who don't usually work together.
  • Keep the school's protocol and the First Response Guide at hand, in case something concerning comes up.
  • Find out ahead of time who students can turn to at school, so you can name them at the end.
1. Framing (5 min)

Before you start, say something like this in your own words:

"Today we're going to talk about something that happens to all of us, adults too. There are no right answers. No one has to share anything personal if they don't want to, and you can pass. What others share here, we don't repeat outside. If anyone is at risk, the adults will help."

2. Story (5 min): Theseus and Ariadne's thread

Read it or tell it:

"On the island of Crete there was a huge labyrinth where the Minotaur lived. No one who went in ever managed to get out. Theseus decided to go in and face it. Before he went, Ariadne gave him a ball of thread. Theseus tied one end at the entrance and unwound it as he went. After facing the Minotaur, he followed the thread and was able to get back to the exit."

3. Opening questions (10 min)

Ask them one at a time. Wait: silence is part of the work.

  1. Would Theseus have made it out alone?
  2. Theseus was strong. Why did he need the thread anyway?
  3. Why is it sometimes so hard for us to ask for help?
  4. If there were labyrinths today, what would they be?

If no one speaks: offer an everyday example of your own ("it's hard for me to ask for help when I feel I should be able to manage alone"). It opens the door without exposing anyone.

How to receive the answers: don't argue about why it's hard to ask for help (embarrassment, not wanting to bother anyone, "I have to manage on my own"): they are all real. Respond with another question.

4. What's worth knowing (10 min): the threads
  • Asking for help is a skill, not a weakness. Even the heroes of myths need it.
  • A trusting relationship is one where I can show myself as I am, I am listened to and I am not made to feel less.
  • Some relationships seem to care but do harm: when someone controls, isolates, checks your phone or makes you feel guilty.
  • There are also adults who approach online with other intentions. Recognizing it is the first step toward asking for help.

Close with the sentence: "No one gets out of the labyrinth alone."

5. Creative part (25 min): my web

First, each student draws their own map of threads on a sheet of paper, privately and without sharing it: who they could turn to if they are sad, if they have a problem at school, if something scares them. Then, in groups, they make a poster with possible phrases for asking for help (for example: "Do you have a minute? Something's going on with me").

Sharing with the whole group: each group shares its phrases. They stay on a poster in the classroom.

6. Into everyday life (15 min): using a thread

Each student fills in their blank card, privately:

  • One thread I have is…
  • Something small I could ask them for this week is…
  • Someone I could ask how they are really doing is…

They take a photo of it and take it with them. It is not handed in or read aloud.

At the end, remind them who they can turn to at school (the counseling team) and that help lines exist.

7. Closing (5 min): the web

In a circle, the ball of yarn passes from hand to hand without letting go of the thread, and each person says one word about what makes a relationship trustworthy. At the end, the group sees the web it made. The ball can be passed without speaking.

Care
  • The map of threads is private: some kids may have few and don't have to expose that.
  • If someone tells about a violent relationship or about an adult approaching them online, don't go deeper in front of the group: approach them privately afterwards and follow the First Response Guide.
  • Follow the school's protocol and consult the counseling team.
  • Don't promise absolute confidentiality: if there is risk, action has to be taken.
By age
  • 12 to 14: center the workshop on friendship, on belonging to the group and on asking for help from adults at school and at home. The closing with the ball of yarn is ideal at this age.
  • 15 to 18: give more room to dating relationships (control, jealousy, pressure) and to online relationships, including grooming. In the map of threads, add resources beyond their close circle: the health center, help lines and neighborhood spaces.
After the workshop

The counseling team writes down in 3 lines what came up about asking for help and about the group's relationships, without names. That record feeds the Sustain stage and the next cycle.

Fixed piece

Getting through a hard time

One of six 25-minute pieces every grade receives.

Read the full piece

Grades 9–12. 25 minutes.

For the adult leading it

  • No one is asked to share a hard moment out loud. The personal work stays on each student's own page.
  • Avoid phrases that shut things down: "everything happens for a reason," "you have to be strong," "others have it worse."
  • This piece does not teach students to tough it out. It teaches that hard times are something you get through, and not alone.
  • If a student shares something concerning, follow the school's first-response guide and tell the counselor.

Opening (3 minutes)

Write the word strong on the board. Ask the group: What does being strong mean when something goes wrong?

Write the answers down as they come. "Not crying," "acting like nothing happened" and "handling it by yourself" usually come up. Leave them on the board; you will come back to them.

What's worth knowing (7 minutes)

Everyone goes through hard times: something lost, something that changed, something that didn't work out. Having a hard time is not failing. It is part of being alive.

People often talk about being strong or weak as if you were born one or the other. It doesn't work that way. What gets us through a hard time isn't something we're born with. It gets built, over time and with other people.

Three things help:

  • Naming it. What goes unnamed weighs more. Saying "I'm sad," "I'm scared" or "I'm angry" is already a first move.
  • Not going through it alone. You don't need to tell everyone. One person is enough.
  • Taking one small step. Keeping going doesn't mean gritting your teeth. Sometimes it means stopping, and then trying again.

And once something is behind you, it's worth looking back and asking what held you up. Gratitude isn't forcing yourself to see the bright side of what hurt. It's recognizing who was there and what helped you keep going.

Not everything passes on its own. If a hard time lasts and weighs too much, it's time to ask for help.

What held me up (10 minutes)

Each student works on their own page, for themselves only. They choose a hard moment that is already behind them and that they can look at today. It doesn't have to be the hardest thing in their life.

They draw a line and mark three points on it:

  • What happened, in a few words.
  • What or who held me up: a person, a place, something I did.
  • What I know now that I didn't know then.

Anyone who would rather not use something of their own can use a character from a book, a show or a movie.

At the end, anyone who wants to shares one thing only: what held them up. Nothing else. The group's list goes on the board.

Closing: Ariadne's thread (5 minutes)

The myth tells that Theseus had to enter a labyrinth no one had ever come back from. Ariadne gave him a ball of thread. He tied one end at the entrance and walked in without letting go. He didn't make it out because he was the strongest. He made it out because he had a thread, and because someone had given it to him.

Go back to the word on the board and to what the group said at the start. Would you change anything we wrote?

To take with you:

  • What is your thread?
  • Who could you be the thread for?
Next: Sustain← Back