Our Whole Lives (OWL)

Comprehensive Sexuality Education for 6th-8th Graders

Join the Fall 2025 OWL Cohort – Registration is Live!

While we currently offer curriculum for middle schoolers, The Our Whole Lives (OWL) curricula offer age-appropriate sexuality education for people from kindergarten through adulthood. Originally developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association in the 1970s and updated in the 1990s in collaboration with the United Church of Christ, OWL is grounded in the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).

OWL is a comprehensive 27-session sexuality education program that empowers youth to make informed, responsible decisions about their sexual health and relationships. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, it covers six key areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture.

Through honest, age-appropriate information and guided discussion, participants build self-esteem, clarify their values, strengthen interpersonal skills, and explore the emotional and social dimensions of sexuality.

Through generous support from this years Give Orcas campaign, we’re proud to once again offer this important and impactful curriculum again for Orcas Island middle schoolers.

“OWL opened my mind up. I am more conscious of how other people feel and I am more comfortable around people different than me.” – Henry Miller 2014

“ I remember looking forward to Saturdays and the OWL sleepovers at Orkila. The activities planned were sometimes fun and silly, and sometimes serious, but I always felt like I was safe and I really could talk about anything I wanted. I had a great time with OWL!!”
 –Arla Sutton 2014

OWL Program Assumptions

Our Whole Lives is based on a set of assumptions about the rights of young people. We believe that they have the right to:

• Ask any questions they have about sexuality.
• Receive complete information about sexuality.
• Explore any issues of sexuality that interest them.
• Have support in making their own decisions about sexual matters.
• Learn how sexuality can be expressed in ways that are healthy and life affirming.
• Be treated with respect by leaders and participants in this group.

This curriculum is also based on the following assumptions about human sexuality:

• All persons are sexual. Sexuality is a good part of the human experience.
• Sexuality includes much more than sexual behavior.
• Human beings are sexual from the time they are born until they die.
• It is natural to express sexual feelings in a variety of ways.
• People engage in healthy sexual behavior for a variety of reasons, including: to express caring and love, to experience intimacy and connection with another, to share pleasure, to bring new life into the world and to experience fun and relaxation.
• Sexuality in our society is damaged by violence, exploitation, alienation, dishonesty, abuse of power and the treatment of persons as objects.

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