OWL's Purpose: Our Why

Owner: Director of Orgazational Strategy & Learning (DOSL) – with input from all Directors Audience: All OWL staff, partners, and stakeholders

OWL's Mission and Vision

Open Way Learning (OWL) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization on a mission to co-design ways to amplify the joy and wonder of learning for every student. We envision a future where all learners can change the world—and schools empower that change to happen now.

Our work centers on helping schools and districts develop, sustain, and scale cultures of learner-centered innovation, with a special focus on students historically furthest from opportunity. We believe that educational transformation doesn't come from top-down mandates or one-size-fits-all programs—it happens through grassroots innovation that is co-created, deeply human, and grounded in local strengths.

Our Core Beliefs

We are driven by three foundational ideas:

1. Culture comes first: Innovation flourishes in school cultures that are rooted in trust, shared leadership, and collective responsibility. Without these foundations, even the best strategies fall flat.

2. Conditions matter: We've seen that cultures of innovation thrive when four conditions are in place:

   • A shared, living mission and vision

   • Collective leadership structures

   • System-wide collaboration

   • Open exchange of ideas and resources

   These conditions create the ecosystem for transformative learning to take root.

3. The talent is already here: Every school has the creative potential to design better ways of teaching and learning. By applying “the open source way”—transparency, inclusivity, collaboration, adaptability, and community—we help unlock and connect that talent in service of sustainable change.

OWL's Values

OWL is serious about a “Living Mission & Vision” and that extends to our values as well. They aren't something you hang on the wall—they should live as part of what someone experiences in practice and partnership with OWL every day—in conversations, decisions, feedback, and follow-through.

The following values represent not just how we aspire to work, but how we actually work: with each other, with the schools and communities we serve, and with the broader network of partners who share our vision of a better, more learner-centered future for education. They also reflect the deep commitments that shape our culture as an open organization, rooted in the belief that transparency, collaboration, and equity are not just buzzwords, but the foundation for sustainable transformation.

These values aren't just aspirational—they're operational. They shape how we design our work, how we build our culture, and how we navigate challenges together. They show up in the details of a workshop plan, in the way we give feedback, and in the choices we make when no one's watching. Our hope and our expectation is that you'll live these values not as a checklist, but as a compass—a way to stay aligned to our shared purpose, mission, and vision.

Integrity in Action

At OWL, we care deeply about results, but never at the expense of how we achieve them. We hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, guided by mission-driven principles and a deep sense of fairness in all our relationships. This commitment is personal. OWL Co-Founder Ben Owens often shares advice from his grandfather:

"The most important thing you have in life is your name—it can take years to build a good one and only a second to destroy it."

That simple truth still drives how we show up—for our team, our partners, and the students we ultimately serve. Our reputation is not just a reflection of the work we deliver, but a reflection of who we are.

Transparency & Trust

We believe that openness builds trust and that trust builds everything else. That is why we default to making our thinking, progress, and process visible to others, in real time, not just after the work is finished. We also default to thoroughly documenting our decisions and sharing what we know. Whether it's a facilitation strategy, a draft policy, or a project plan, we aim to make our work visible and accessible to all stakeholders. That includes internal team members, OWL Fellows, school partners, and beyond.

We also assume positive intent, give and receive candid feedback, and name tensions early, because we know that trust doesn't grow in the dark. It grows when people feel seen, heard, and respected.

Equity & Belonging

• We believe every student deserves access to learning that is meaningful, affirming, and life-changing. That belief extends to every person we work with, too.

• We are committed to co-creating spaces where people of all backgrounds (i.e. across race, gender, geography, income, ability, identity, lived experience, etc.) can thrive and contribute. This isn't about politics. It's about people.

• We know that historically our education systems haven't served all students equally. That's why our work centers on closing opportunity gaps, not widening them. We don't just want innovation to scale, we want it to reach. Equity without access is just rhetoric. We strive to ensure our work positively disrupts comfortable patterns of the status quo by creating new, locally-generated possibilities for every student.

Adaptability & Iteration

• We proudly operate in a state of perpetual beta.

• We believe that relevance, responsiveness, and refinement are signs of strength—not weakness. We seek radically candid feedback early and often. We pivot when needed. We test ideas, learn from what doesn't work, and iterate toward something better.

• This continual improvement mindset helps us serve schools with humility and flexibility. No two communities are alike, so no two engagements should look the same. Our culture of iteration drives our focus on hyper-customization by ensuring we're always learning how to serve our partners more meaningfully and more effectively.

Collaboration by Default

• We recognize that the best solutions are rarely designed in isolation. Whether working internally across roles or externally with clients and partners, we build with—not for—others. Collaboration isn't just our default process. It's a reflection of our deep respect for collective wisdom.

• We work to create environments where every voice is valued, including those of students, knowing that often the quietest ideas are often the most profound. We believe that when people feel safe to contribute, everyone benefits. The idea is that not every idea is implemented, but every idea is heard.

Collective Leadership & Community

• OWL's leadership model is open and distributed because we believe leadership is a practice, not a position.

• Every team member is empowered to make informed, mission-aligned decisions based on our shared strategic goals. We use tools like RACI matrices and open protocols to clarify ownership, reduce confusion, and keep momentum going.

• Our collective leadership model builds internal capacity, accelerates progress, and ensures that the best ideas rise regardless of where they come from (based on the open source idea that the code talks*). Leadership is everyone's responsibility and it thrives in a culture of trust, clarity, and mutual accountability.

  *The concept of "the code talks" refers to how open-source coding offers a significant advantage for continuous improvement due to its collaborative nature, rapid feedback loops, and inherent transparency. By enabling developers to contribute, review, and refine code publicly, open-source projects benefit from a diverse pool of talent and insights, leading to faster development, bug fixes, and creation of cutting-edge software.

Quality & Craft

• We take great pride in both what we do and how we do it. Whether designing a single workshop or supporting a long-term culture shift across a district, we set a high bar—customizing every engagement, obsessing over the details, and relentlessly seeking ways to improve. Our work is grounded in humility, precision, and purpose.

• Our goal isn't just to be effective—it's to be genuinely transformative. We strive to deliver experiences that feel fundamentally different from traditional professional development. That means creating environments where educators are not passive recipients of a prescribed program, but active co-creators in a process that values their ideas, honors their expertise, and builds capacity for lasting change.

• We fiercely protect our reputation for excellence, because we understand the trust that schools place in us—trust that involves not just their time and resources, but their people, their hopes, and their commitment to something better.

Learning & Growth

• We are a learning organization—not just in name, but in practice. Inspired by Peter Senge and other thought leaders, we believe learning is a continuous, collective responsibility. We invest in our own growth and that of our partners. We know that when we learn, we improve, and when we improve, we create greater impact.

• We embrace calculated risks, lean into complexity, and treat failure as a stepping stone, not a stopping point. This mindset allows us to fail forward: to reflect, adapt, and rise stronger.

• We also follow the principle of “go slow to go fast”—taking the time to build clarity, relationships, and shared purpose up front, so we can move with confidence and cohesion down the line.

The Open Way Learning History

“Who wants to research this technology and bring their findings back to the team?” “What's needed for us to scale this work to other areas?” “What data do we need to better understand the impact of this solution?”

You might expect to hear these questions in a Silicon Valley innovation lab, but they were common refrains in the Critical Friends meetings at Tri-County Early College High School (TCEC) in rural western North Carolina. Every two weeks, the full teaching staff and administrators would gather not just to plan lessons, but to collaborate, challenge each other, and co-design school-wide strategies to better meet the needs of their students.

TCEC may not be a household name, but it was modeled after schools that are, like High Tech High, University Park Campus School in Boston, and Manor New Tech High in Texas. Launched in 2006 with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the school served a population of first-generation college-goers and students who had historically been underserved by traditional systems. From the start, the mission was clear: do school differently.

That meant embracing practices that looked more like a high-performing startup than a conventional high school: competency-based education, interdisciplinary project-based learning, place-based service learning, student-led e-portfolios, arts-integrated STEM, and a strong focus on social-emotional learning through daily Advisory. It meant rethinking everything, from schedules to assessments to how staff made decisions. And it worked. TCEC quickly built a track record of success with students who had previously struggled in traditional settings.

A pivotal moment came in 2015, when the school was named a finalist in the national XQ Super School Challenge. Though it didn't win the grant, the process became a catalyst for deeper transformation. The school revisited its mission and vision, doubled down on student-centered innovation, and fully embraced the open source way—a cultural framework rooted in transparency, community, collaboration, inclusivity, and adaptability. What followed was a set of radical, yet practical shifts:

• Interdisciplinary, cross-grade, community-facing projects

• Flexible scheduling and advisory structures

• Mentorship embedded in all student projects

• Teacher-led governance through a Business Advisory Council and professional learning rounds

For co-founders Ben Owens and Adam Haigler, who were leading this work from inside this “Teacher Powered” school, these changes weren't theoretical, they were deeply personal. They saw how a school culture grounded in shared leadership, real-time iteration, and collective purpose could transform both student outcomes and educator engagement. And they knew this wasn't unique to one school—it could be the foundation for broader change.

This led to their co-authored book, Open Up Education! How Open Way Learning Can Transform Schools, which captured the principles behind the work and connected them to a broader ecosystem of educators, researchers, and innovators around the world.

By 2018, Ben left the classroom to form what would eventually become Open Way Learning (originally Open Way PBL, LLC), a nonprofit dedicated to helping schools everywhere build learner-centered cultures of innovation. Adam joined full-time in 2020 and together, they began working with schools and districts across the country, sharing not a scripted model, but a mindset and method for transformation rooted in co-design, openness, and trust.

Today, OWL is a growing team of passionate educators and partners helping schools reimagine what's possible, not by imposing change from the outside, but by unlocking the creativity and expertise that already exists within each community. We support this through design sprints, workshops, coaching, school redesign, and policy advocacy. We are driven by the belief that innovation doesn't scale through compliance, it scales through community.

And now, the story includes you! The fact that you're reading this means you are now part of OWL's story. And just like the educators and students at TCEC, your insights, creativity, and questions will shape what comes next.

We see OWL as a living, evolving organization—a collective of people working toward a shared mission to amplify the joy and wonder of learning. Our culture is stronger because it adapts, and our impact is deeper because it grows through the contributions of every person who joins us.

So bring your perspective. Share your ideas. Ask hard questions. The next chapter of OWL's story is being written right now—and it's better with you in it.

Influential Readings

The following books have significantly influenced OWL's philosophy and approach—from its formation to how we have evolved to better live our mission and vision. Employees are encouraged to read and reflect on these texts as part of our shared journey as a learning organization:

• The Open Organization – Jim Whitehurst

• Drive – Daniel H. Pink

• The Culture Code – Daniel Coyle

• Switch – Chip & Dan Heath

• Change by Design – Tim Brown

• Open: How We'll Work, Live and Learn in the Future – David Price

• Reinventing Organizations – Frederic Laloux

• Presentation Zen – Garr Reynolds

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Peter F. Drucker

• In Search of Deeper Learning – Jal Mehta & Sarah Fine

These resources complement our own experiences and are often referenced in the development of OWL's internal processes, professional development, and external services.