Opening Session with Katya Paukova

I opened my 6th NTPRS with a keynote breakfast (something new...) with Katya Paukova.  It was impressive to me that almost half of the attendees are newbies who have never been to an NTPRS before and are learning about the method.  As they go through the journey, I hope they will reach out when they encounter bumps in the road.

Katya spoke for about 45 minutes about her journey and shared some great words of wisdom about language teaching.

• Learning should not be painful.
• If we learn the culture, we will accept the people (because we will see that they are people just like us).  
• Fluency does not rest on grammar knowledge; in fact, the most successful speakers are the ones who speak without fear of making errors.
• We are all learners, just at different stages of this journey.
• You don't need everyone to like it, you just need one (I need to remember this...I have fallen into a terrible habit of allowing a class to fall into chaos in fear of losing one student because they might not like me if I re-direct them)
• Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it can't be done.  (Woah....think about that one for a minute.  I feel so bogged down by fear of failure and fear of the unknown...Big ups to those coaches who encourage me to go for it...  Especially Mira Canion who may have inspired me to write a novel and to Andrea Schweitzer who may have convinced me to try making videos...)
• I think that this should be shouted from the rooftops: TPRS IS USED AT THE US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE TO TEACH LANGUAGES TO OFFICERS WORKING IN MILITARY DEFENSE!!!!!!  If it didn't work, would we trust the safety of our country to the method????
• Before, we were not taking students to the desired end of proficiency and we have to change direction (through CI)

Great keynote full of laughs and love and cheering.  I'm so glad that I decided to drink the KoolAid and become part of this family.  And for those I'm missing this year...come visit KC!!