registration for 2023-2024 is closed

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registration for 2023-2024 is closed 〰️

Our Whole Lives (OWL) Sexuality Education for Grades 7-8

Parents are children’s primary teachers, but what is society teaching our children about sexuality? Our Whole Lives is an antidote to sexualized media messages, peer pressure, misinformation and prejudice. It provides accurate, age-appropriate information, puts sexuality in the context of values and personal responsibility, supports healthy decision-making, and strengthens social skills. These skills and values help prepare youth to make healthy choices for life.

Our Whole Lives (OWL) Values:

  • Self Worth

  • Sexual Health

  • Responsibility

  • Justice and Inclusivity

OWL models and teaches caring, compassion, respect, and justice. It helps adolescents address their attitudes, values, and feelings about themselves, their sexuality, and others’ sexuality. Participants are guided by trained facilitators through an engaging curriculum that addresses topics most important to young adolescents, including those typically excluded from sexuality education and health classes.

OWL is a secular curriculum appropriate in a variety of settings. Sexuality and Our Faith for Grades 7-9 is a religious supplement for use in Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ congregations.

Waco 2023-2024 Course Details:

The course here in Waco will be facilitated by Stephanie Spitzer-Hanks and Shelby Nowland, both ministers within the United Church of Christ who take seriously their ordination vow to “reach out to all who are in Christ and show Christian love to people of other faiths and people of no faith.” We will use the religious supplement, Sexuality and Our Faith, but we will take care to ensure that students of another or no faith will not feel excluded.

The course will run from September 2023 through April 2024 and will meet primarily on Monday evenings. Each workshop will last 2 hours. There will be a course fee of $50 per student, with a sibling discount of half off. If finances are a barrier, please let us know as scholarship funds are available. Mandatory parent/guardian orientation meetings: 6-8pm on Monday, July 31 & Monday, August 7, 2023. A parent/guardian MUST attend both meetings for their child to be eligible to participate in the course.

>>REGISTRATION FOR THE 2023-2024 COURSE IS CLOSED<<

If you are a parent or guardian who would like to receive information about the course for 2024-2025, please fill out the interest form below.

Frequently Asked Questions:

  • We are sorry, but no. In order to create a brave & safe space for learning in community, we must limit enrollment to a two-year age span.

  • No, parents are not welcome to sit in, as teens mays not feel free to ask and participate freely with parents present. We encourage teens to share what they learn in class with their parents, but it is up to them what they choose to share.

  • We will have the course materials available at the OWL Curious? info session and at the parent/guardian orientation meetings, but we cannot make the materials available online or duplicate them in any way.

  • No. We encourage teens to miss as few workshops as possible, but there are no penalties for being absent. Our goal is to create a community where teens feel safe to learn, and that is best done when everyone is present as much as they can be.

  • We very much hope your kid will be comfortable! We have zero interest in trying to convert anyone. We ask that the students listen respectfully during the times that we may read Bible verses and/or prayers, but we do not require that anyone participate in any religious components unless they want to. We are interested in sharing an alternate religious view of sexuality that otherwise your teen may not know exists. That is all.

  • Absolutely! Inclusivity is a fundamental value of Our Whole Lives. All gender identities, expressions and sexual orientations are given equal value. We teach with the assumption that there are LGBTQ+ youth present in the group, regardless of whether they have disclosed that information to us.

  • Absolutely not! This is a very, very comprehensive course. One of our final workshops is “Sexual Decision Making,” when the teens are encouraged to create their own “bottom line” about the circumstances under which they believe they will be ready to have sex. Then they practice communicating their bottom line to a potential sexual partner. We do state our OWL value that it is healthier for young teens to postpone sexual intercourse, but we do not tell them when we think they will be ready. We give them the tools to make that decision for themselves.

Have another question? Please, ask away! stephanie@revdoula.com.

Curious to hear more? Check out the podcast interview below:

Have you ever felt like there are various parts of your self or your life that cannot be brought to church? That cannot be talked about or are just plain off-limits? In this life-giving interview, Minister Amy Johnson brings the fire, shedding light on how sexuality and our faith lives do not have to be separate. Spoiler alert: sexuality does not just mean sex. It is our relationships, our senses, our communication. There are many ways in which sexuality, faith, and even justice intersect, and Minister Amy offers us a place to reflect on how churches can be places where we can come as our full selves; leaving nothing at the door. Her message: God loves you exactly as you are.

Amy Johnson, MSW, LICSW, CSE currently serves as the Our Whole Lives Coordinator for the United Church of Christ. She is also both a national and international sexuality educator, author, and consultant, and a trainer for all levels of Our Whole Lives and Sexuality and Our Faith.

Listen to the podcast here: Lady Preacher Podcast: Minister Amy Johnson on Sexuality & the Church: Bringing Our Whole Selves to God