1. Lesson 4
The aim of lesson 4 is to support the students to seek help, if problems should arise, as well as make the students conscious of what can be done on different levels – individually, in class, at school, and in society, to prevent long-term loneliness.
Far too many young people walk around with problems that they keep to themselves.
Sometimes it is because they are ashamed, sometimes it is because they thing they should be able to deal with it alone, and sometimes it is because they do not know how they should ask for help – or where they can ask for help.
It is important that one seeks help if one is not doing well. One should not continue in the same situation, if one cannot cope with it – and it is completely fair that there are things one cannot cope with!
As a classmate, you can do a lot to help someone who is not doing well. Classmates do not have a responsibility for each other’s well-being, but they have a responsibility to react, if they become worried about someone else’s well-being.
All rights reserved. Reproduction of the material without Ventilens written consent is not permitted according to applicable Danish copyright law, © 2017 Ventilen Danmark

2. Options for action Content
Youth who are not doing well must receive help.
What can classmates do?
Where can one find help?
Corner exercise
Summary
2 min.
Last time we talked about loneliness and social languish. In this lesson, we will work with how one can take action if one becomes worried about oneself or others.
Go over the program.

3. Languish requires help
Problems can either be solved or grow.
When something becomes too big to deal with alone, there is always help to be found.
It is always okay to ask for help from others.
It is always okay to offer help to others.
5 min.
Problems rarely go away by themselves – if one does not deal with them, they have a tendency to grow.
Too many young people walk around alone with their problems – and thus, they often grow. Studies of Danish young people’s well-being have shown that the vast majority of youth are thriving, but that there is also a tendency that many young people keep their problems to themselves for too long before they seek help. The misunderstanding seems to be ‘It is me there is something wrong with. I should get it together’ (Når det er svært at være ung i DK, af Center for Ungdomsforskning i 2011).
One can be in doubt about when a problem is so big that one needs help to solve it. The answer is quite simple – when one believes it is!
Small problems are common and completely normal. It is when small problems either linger or become bigger problems that one needs help. Just like when a cough has stuck around too long or worsened, and one goes to the doctor. When one is not doing well socially, it is important to let someone know that one is not doing well.
Everyone knows that it is okay to ask for help. We have heard that before. That doesn’t mean that we are good at it, and that is why we repeat it. It is okay to ask for help.
That it is also okay to offer help is not talked about that often. Many would like to help if they are asked for it, but can find it difficult to offer it themselves. There is often a fear of intimacy or squeamishness tied to ‘disturbing’ others. What if one is wrong, or what if it is awkward for the other person? Ask the students to think about how uncomfortable is feels when one is sad and everyone else pretends nothing is wrong – it is always okay to offer others help.

4. Where can one find help? Here at school:
[Here you can write the opportunities available for help at your school – preferably, also put up photos of your counselors, coaches, mentors, etc.]
Nationally:
Counseling site ‘Tværs’:
Refer to the sheet ‘Where can one find help?’
5 min.
Here you can tell the students about the opportunities to seek help that exist at your school. It can be student counselors, mentors, assistant teachers, or someone completely different. You can write in the opportunities in the slide above. You can also tell students that one can ask for help in many ways – some are good at saying very precisely what they need, while others can just feel that something is not as it should be and that they need help to put words to it. Some are good at asking for help directly while others do it in more indirect ways or unconsciously – it can be through a style, on a class trip, or something else.
Besides the school’s own opportunities, you should also make the students aware of DR’s counseling site ‘Tværs,’ where they can find an overview of the counseling offers throughout the country.
After that, you should hand out the document ‘Where can one find help?’ to the students. The document can be found under lesson 3 on the website. You should briefly take a look at the document together, and you should explain to students that there are a great many offers nationally that can help young people with different problems or challenges.

5. Corner exercise
In this exercise, you must find out what can be done when a student feels excluded from the community.
With your partnership group, go to the corner your group has been assigned.
Read the description of the exercise which has been handed out to you.
Discuss what one can do to prevent short-term loneliness turning into a long-term feeling of loneliness.
Choose a ‘secretary’ who can write down your suggestions.
30 min.
The corner exercise takes 15 minutes, after which 10 minutes can be spent on rounding up.
The students should now get in their partnership groups and do the corner exercise. You assign each partnership group a corner in the classroom and ask them to go to the corner they have been assigned. There are 4 corners, so there will be more than one group in some of the corners.
Hand out ‘Corner exercise’ to each partnership group (it can be found on the website as student material to this lesson). They must now work to find out what can be done to prevent short-term feelings of loneliness turning into long-term feelings – in other words, how we can try to prevent that someone feels excluded from the community and has a hard time becoming part of it. The four corners among which you have divided the partnership groups represent four different levels; the individual, the group, the institutional, and the societal.
The students will get 15 minutes to write down their suggestions. There is a teaching document with significant points under each level which should be used during the summary – the document is called ‘Corner exercise – teaching material.’ Orientate yourself on these points while the students work with their suggestions. After that, you can sum up the exercise together, where each group very briefly must present their proposals for what can be done at the different levels to prevent loneliness.