A Brief History of Open World Learning Community
On September 8th, 1971, a new school was born in St. Paul, Minnesota as part of the St. Paul School District. Its name was the St. Paul Open School. It was a school originally designed to serve 500 students, ages 5 through 18. It was a school that would have no grades, either class level grades or assessment grades. It was a school developed with broad community input and had expressed goals of “individual learning, humane education, child centered, capitalization of student interest, students progressing at their own rate, and the development of students ability to self-start, self direct, and self motivate.” Furthermore, the school included “total openness and flexibility with regard to subject matter, schedules, classes, and all forms of study.”
Forty-seven years later, while different in age configuration and school name, St. Paul Open School holds many of these early progressive ideals close to its core values such as a student centered approach and individualized learning and self-direction. Today, St. Paul Open is Open World Learning Community (OWL) and while we are still a St. Paul Public School with a 6-12th grade citywide attendance area, we are also an EL Education School focusing on the mastery of skills and knowledge, character development, and high quality student work. We are very proud of the work our faculty and students have done over the last six years to develop OWL into the excellent EL Education school it has become today. On June 6th, 2017 we celebrated the graduation of our first class of seniors who went through the entire EL Education program at OWL.
On September 8th, 1971, a new school was born in St. Paul, Minnesota as part of the St. Paul School District. Its name was the St. Paul Open School. It was a school originally designed to serve 500 students, ages 5 through 18. It was a school that would have no grades, either class level grades or assessment grades. It was a school developed with broad community input and had expressed goals of “individual learning, humane education, child centered, capitalization of student interest, students progressing at their own rate, and the development of students ability to self-start, self direct, and self motivate.” Furthermore, the school included “total openness and flexibility with regard to subject matter, schedules, classes, and all forms of study.”
Forty-seven years later, while different in age configuration and school name, St. Paul Open School holds many of these early progressive ideals close to its core values such as a student centered approach and individualized learning and self-direction. Today, St. Paul Open is Open World Learning Community (OWL) and while we are still a St. Paul Public School with a 6-12th grade citywide attendance area, we are also an EL Education School focusing on the mastery of skills and knowledge, character development, and high quality student work. We are very proud of the work our faculty and students have done over the last six years to develop OWL into the excellent EL Education school it has become today. On June 6th, 2017 we celebrated the graduation of our first class of seniors who went through the entire EL Education program at OWL.
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OWL's Vision
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Habits of Work and Learning
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Demographics
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Enrollment
As of 2016, 439 students are enrolled at Open World Learning Community.
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