K-1st Grade OWL

REGISTRATION CLOSED Our Whole Lives: Sexuality Education for Grades K-1 is an age-appropriate curriculum that helps parents and caregivers educate your child about bodies, gender, boundaries, families, conception, birth, and babies. You will be actively involved as your child learns through songs, stories, activities and at-home projects that promote family dialogue. The curriculum carefully addresses some very basic age-appropriate child sexual abuse prevention education. It also teaches children to be proud of their bodies and celebrate the diversity of families. Questions? Contact Rev. Chris Scheller. To see the schedule and details, and to express interest, please use our OWL registration form here. 

 

4th-5th Grade OWL

REGISTRATION CLOSED Our Whole Lives: Sexuality Education for Grades 4-5 helps children learn about and discuss the physical, emotional changes, and social changes of puberty. Parents and caregivers can be actively involved in the exploration of growing older, values, communication and decision-making. To see the schedule and to express interest, please use our OWL registration form here. Question? Contact Rev. Chris Scheller. For more information, click here.

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7th-8th Grade OWL

For many years, our congregation has offered a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum called Our Whole Lives (O.W.L.) for either 7th-8th graders, or 8th-9th graders. This curriculum helps young people of all sexual orientations and identities (bisexual, lesbian, gay, transgender, cisgender, and heterosexual) develop the skills and knowledge they need to have safe, respectful, and fulfilling relationships throughout their lives. This O.W.L. program runs biannually and we last offered it together with the First Church in Salem and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead. The next time we will offer this program will be for the 2025-26 program year.

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Parents and Caregivers As Sexuality Educators:
Small Group Ministry

At UUCGL, we take seriously the idea that parents and caregivers are the primary sexuality educators of their children, and we want to offer support, perhaps even while your child is enrolled in an OWL class! This small group ministry is being planned to occur during the OWL classes, meeting during the K-1st and/or the 4-5th grade OWL classes, depending on interest, and will be different for each of the K-1st and 4-5th grade parent and caregiver groups. Adults will explore their roles as the most important sexuality educators their children will have. Participants are invited to engage deeply with their hopes and fears, their values and practices. This program emphasizes the adult’s ongoing adult responsibility to share accurate, current information, as needed, with their child or youth. To express interest, please click here.​

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Older Adult OWL (50+)

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Last year, we offered this OWL Sexuality Education class for adults aged 50+, for the first time and it was very well received! If there is sufficient interest, we may be able to offer the class again this year, or otherwise next year. This program is comprehensive and progressive, addressing sexuality with candor, sensitivity, and respect for older adults’ wisdom and life experience. Workshops include sexuality and values, attitudes about aging, family matters, and body image. There is a 15 person maximum for the class; registration will be closed when we reach this limit. Last year, we found Thursday afternoons worked well, but the time is still to be determined. To express interest, please use our OWL registration form here. Question? Contact Rev. Chris Scheller.​​

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What’s Religious about Sexuality Education? In liberal religious sexuality education, we seek to provide roots and wings for program participants. The roots are our Unitarian Universalist religious traditions and values, which accept participants and value them for who they are so they feel good about themselves and their sexuality. The wings are the freedom they have to make meaning of their own lives; the opportunity to clarify their own values and apply them to their own experiences; and the strength to develop into their own true, best selves. The Our Whole Lives curricula help transform a cultural climate of fear and confusion into a new reality of lives lived congruent with the values of the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person. For more about why and how sexuality education belongs in a faith community, click here.