YouthLine offers free interactive lessons in school settings to help teens tackle common life stressors.
Our 45-90 minutes classroom lessons are tailored to your classroom and designed to:
- Complement existing health curriculum
- Normalize help seeking behavior
- Destigmatize conversations about mental health and substance use
- Identify individualized support systems, trusted adults, and community resources
Connecting in the Classroom
At this time, we are offering our Let’s Talk YouthLine lesson to students grades 6-12 virtually via Zoom video conferencing or Google Meets. In person workshops are currently being offered in and around the Portland Metro Area. Interested in scheduling an in person or virtual lesson? Email YouthL@linesforlife.org for more information.
Let’s Talk YouthLine (60 minutes)
This lesson introduces the YouthLine as a resource for students while normalizing mental health conversations and help-seeking behavior. Students identify individualized supports and self-care strategies. Each attendee receives our Getting Through Today brochure and an interactive wallet card.
About Our Lessons
We believe that
1) teens are resilient,
2) teens can gain coping skills to positively guide their lives, and
3) negative perceptions around mental health and seeking help can be turned around.
We deliver lessons using interactive co-facilitation and peer teaching that keeps students engaged. YouthLine volunteers help initiate and lead discussions that normalize subject matter.
Please keep in mind: We currently offer classroom education on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We reach capacity at 45 students and additional classes may not be combined. We do not require technology, but we must have access to ample wall space.
For more information or to schedule YouthLine Outreach in your area, email YouthL@linesforlife.org.
Let’s Talk YouthLine
Learn Mental Health Concepts and understand YouthLine as a resource.
Grades 6-12
This unique 30-40 minute lesson introduces the YouthLine as a resource for students while normalizing mental health conversations and help-seeking behavior. Students identify individualized supports and self-care strategies. Each attendee receives our Getting Through Today brochure and an interactive wallet card.
Skill building: Define Mental Health concerns, identify appropriate resources, increase help-seeking behaviors
Suicide Awareness
Moving past stigma improves life-saving ability to recognize and address the signs of suicide.
Grades 9-12
This lesson combats the stigma around suicidal ideation and depression and gives students a chance to talk about these uncomfortable topics. Teens learn to recognize the signs of suicidal ideation, gauge their personal comfort level with the topic, and identify how to help a friend in crisis.
Skill building: recognize the prevalence of suicide in Oregon, learn warning signs and symptoms of both suicidal thoughts and depression, identify help-seeking behaviors
Coping with Stress
Learning to manage stress fosters resiliency and increases students capacity to discover their own strategies to help calm and regulate when they need it most.
Grades 6-12
Classes build a collective definition of Stress, examine their stressors, and discuss how people cope with stress. Through brainstorming activities, teens learn to identify stress in their lives. Students begin evaluating their own coping strategies and support systems. Each attendee receives our Getting Through Today brochure and an interactive wallet card.
Skill building: recognize stress, distinguish between healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, identify appropriate resources, increase help-seeking behaviors
Stress Management and Suicide Awareness*
Learn to recognize and manage stress in helpful ways. Learn to identify signs of suicide and seek the appropriate resources for help.
Grades 7-8
(*This lesson is an extension of Coping with Stress with an added component around suicide awareness) Classes build their own definitions of stress, identify what causes them stress, and discuss how people cope with stress in both helpful and unhelpful ways. Through brainstorming activities, teens learn to identify stress in their lives. This lesson focuses on ways we recognize suicidal thoughts in those around us and directs students to appropriate resources for help.
Skill building: recognize stress, distinguish between healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, learn how to recognize suicidal ideation, identify help-seeking behaviors, identify appropriate resources
Under Pressure
Recognize peer pressure when it happens and learn how stay true to you.
Grades 6-7
Students learn to sort through the complicated nuances of peer pressure and distinguish between positive and negative pressures. Students become better equipped to recognize peer pressure when it happens and learn how to manage and deal with it when it happens.
Skill building: practice refusal skills, encourage critical thinking behind decisions and what influences them, identify trusted adults for help
Understanding Bullying
Knowing the dynamics and socio-emotional impacts of bullying increases empathy.
Grades 6-8
Classes learn to identify different types of bullying and cyber bullying and analyze the three main roles that exist in bullying situations: the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. Students work to recognize power dynamics and the social-emotional consequences of each role.
Skill building: understand school policies protecting students, encourage students to speak up as bystanders, identify and define all the roles in a bully situation, identify a trusted adult for help.
Teen Decision Making
Understanding brain science helps put risky behavior in perspective.
Grades 9-12
Classes focus on how teens make decisions and why. Using interactive brain models and a risk continuum, students develop an understanding of how risky decisions might play out in their personal life.
Skill building: understand teen brain development, determine realistic ways to avoid risk, increase help seeking behaviors, identify resources for when things don’t go as planned
[Lessons meet Oregon Department of Education Health Standards for Analyzing Influences, Accessing Information, Self-Management, Advocacy, Decision Making, Goal Setting, Interpersonal Communication]
Connecting in the Community
YouthLine provides youth supported outreach, education, destigmatizaion and awareness to communities throughout the state of Oregon (and beyond!) through:
- Classroom presentations
- Trainings for adult and youth gatekeepers
- Youth related conferences and summits
- Provider workshops
- Community events
- Wellness podcasts and webinars
- Informational materials
- Postvention
- Legislative advocacy
- Fundraisers
- And more…
Why Outreach?
The YouthLine’s outreach work is the main way that we reach out to and serve those in our community. Through research supported classroom lessons about sensitive topics like suicide, bullying, and stress, the YouthLine connects to thousands of students across Oregon each year. During the 2019-2020 school year, we reached over 20,000 teens through classroom education and community outreach.
YouthLine works with various community partners to provide youth-focused workshops, provide information and resources and attend various conferences, tabling events, and other community events. Our goal is to spread the word about YouthLine and educate others about mental health, wellness, breaking the stigma around these topics, and normalizing help seeking behavior.
For more information or to schedule YouthLine Outreach in your area:
Email YouthL@linesforlife.org