The Turtle’s Back Workshops Are Coming To The Estes Park Learning Place

The Estes Park Learning Place is excited to introduce the community to Shirl Lawrence and The Turtle’s Back. We invited Shirl and her new program to share our space for a new opportunity for Estes Park children to learn.

Shirl is a former school teacher living in Estes now for almost eight years. You may know her as half of the singing duo, Great Blue along with her husband, Steve. One of her greatest passions is to give children the opportunity to work together on creative research-based long term projects. She is planning to bring that passion back into her life with The Turtle’s Back Workshops.

So what is The Turtle’s Back Workshops?

In 1999, The Turtle’s Back was an idea that Shirl started in New York as an after school program for children ages 8 to 11. It was designed to offer stu dents an opportunity to work together after school in a small group setting on long-term creative writing and art projects that focused in part on the care of our planet EARTH, ourselves, each other.

She is preparing to reintroduce the idea with a few workshops for the children here at The Estes Park Learning Place. One of the first workshops will be The Art of Puppetry Each child will choose a local animal puppet, learn about it through reading, research, note taking, sketches, etc. and then write a puppet play which they will perform for peers and family.

A second workshop will be The Art of Cursive Handwriting. Shirl taught cursive handwriting for 13 years and believes that writing using cursive letters is an important task when it comes to the ease and speed of writing as well as having a positive effect on brain function.

Future workshops include The Art of Writing and Illustrating Picture Books, The Art of Keeping a Writer’s Notebook, The Art of Animal Mask Making and Playwriting

Pop in for a “Meet and Greet” at The Estes Park Learning Place August 22nd between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. Bring your child attending grades 3 to 5 this year and consider registering for one of the first Turtle’s Back Workshops on Puppetry or Cursive Handwriting.

More about Shirl

Shirl’s thirty year experience as an educator includes working as a classroom teacher in grades four and five, followed by working with a small group of sixth grade boys in an after school Gifted and Talented program. She was later hired to work with gifted and talented students for the Extended Learning Program telligences which recognizes eight different ways of being SMART: Verbal/Linguistic, (playwriting poetry, etc), Visual/Spacial (art, etc.), Musical Rhythmic, (playing an instrument, etc.) Mathematical/Logical, (computer programing/technology, etc.) Bodily/Kinesthetic, (dance and theater, etc.) Environmental/Naturalist, (study of our planet earth’s plants and animals) Interpersonal (care of others) Intrapersonal (care of self).

Her work as an educator took a huge turn as she changed the Extended Learn area of giftedness.

About Eli Shirl met Eli Roehl soon after arriving in Estes Park. Eli has been living in Estes for more than 30 plus years and is currently tutoring at The Learning Place. You may also know Eli as a jewelry artist here in Estes. Eli was trained and certified in the Montessori School method of teaching which believes in a child-centered program that helps students discover their unique talents and possibilities. Shirl and Eli quickly realized that they had similar philosophies of teaching and learning.

(ELP) in a New York school district. Educating students in the learning and implementation of higher level thinking skills was at the core of her program.

As she was finishing her Masters Degree with a focus on Gifted and Talented, Shirl engaged small groups of G/T students in grades one through five in a variety of researchbased long term creative project work. She was also given the opportunity to attend a number of summer workshops at various universities including Harvard University’s Programs of Professional Education, University of Connecticut’s Conferences/Institutes on Gifted Education, Columbia UniversityTeacher’s College’s Reading and Writing Workshops.

Shirl will tell you that the highlight of her summer workshop studies was meeting Howard Gardner at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. She learned about his Theory of Multiple In-

A few years later, Shirl returned to being a classroom teacher implementing the ideas of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and setting up her third grade classroom environment to reflect each

Together hope to provide a rewarding experience for children after school at The Turtle’s Back Workshops.