Kaoru

Slotsve

[Recording: 8.23.2025]

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Education Pioneer ● Author ● World Silver Medalist

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Just your average, ordinary, everyday, Pioneer.

A lot of good happens for a lot of people when you travel far and remain in place. You finesse opportunities for those around you to learn and experience worlds they do not yet know, and you expand your own world beyond its natural boundaries. You pull from nothing and build everything. And you find home far from where you began.

A Classic is Born

Crafting an iconic book isn't something you quite set out to do. It just kinda... happens. But, smack-dab in the middle of the 90's, three friends at Kobe Steel had just the right bit of moxie, verve, and talent to pull off such a coup. The book they first published with Tuttle in 1994 remains in print; still the go-to volume for anyone interested in the warmth of the colorful Kansai-ben dialect. The linchpin in that team of three? Kaoru.

From Kobe to Casper

"I'm in Casper for a reason." When a move from Kobe to the literal American Wild West for a year abroad turns into three decades spent as an educator in the vastness of American rangeland, you've gotta imagine a lot of good has made its way to lot of people in the years since Kaoru arrived without her hat 'n boots. Growing a community open to the cultural and linguistic flavors of Japan doesn't happen overnight, nor without the right person at the helm.

Trading Spurs for Skates

Freezing your butt off on the cold stands of your son's hockey rink can make you wanna hustle. Inspired at the age of 47 by the other adults zipping about the ice with their own kids, Kaoru decided to act. Eleven years later, fresh off a silver medal win at the World Winter Masters Games in 2024, it's still paying off. Her "Ina Bauer" may be there but she's still working on her jumps. "Kaoru, at least you're good at making funny faces!" her coach tells her. Grit and a smile... works.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN WITH KAORU

The tremendous power behind NOT looking before you leap.
How we can help others believe in themselves in those moments when their belief is all but suspended.
How she would build and sustain a learning program today based on her nearly 30 years of experience in Wyoming.
Her strategies for building novelty and excitement into work that's largely cyclical, and how the energy we place into hobbies can be the fuel that saves us from ourselves.
Graduate school is HARD. Her take on balancing that workload while working full time and still maintaining a life.
Insight into the best Japanese study habits after 26 years of classroom observation.
The biggest mistakes she still sees learners of Japanese making in their studies.
How to find, apply for, and win grants and scholarships to further your own learning, or on behalf of those you support in school and/or work.
Her strategies for responding successfully to "Call for Papers" (CFP) announcements.
How to successfully wrangle others to help you reach seemingly insurmountable goals.
Why zigging when others are zagging is often the only way to move yourself forward.
Why strapping on a pair of skates at the age of 47 may have been one of her best (recent!) life changing decisions.

Thirteen trips... AND COUNTING!

A near lifetime teaching in a single community connects you to many beating hearts. They belong to your students, their parents, your fellow teachers, and the scores of people in the community that surround you—some of whom you'll never meet. Gluing yourself to that mass of humanity for as long as Kaoru has means you share in the infinite hopes, dreams, fears, and apprehensions of each one of those beating hearts, and over time, you'll wonder... how did everything pan out? Most teachers are left to wonder. Thankfully, Kaoru's inventiveness and love of travel had her build a rather nice response mechanism directly into her curriculum—frequent trips to Japan. These days, those she affectionately refers to as her "grown up American babies" are coming back. Prior students, now adults... some with kids of their own. They're happy to see their "old Japanese teacher" again; happy to experience Japan with the only person on earth they could imagine as their guide.

OUR WELCOMED GUEST

Kaoru Slotsve

Kaoru Slotsve, never set out to be a teacher. Or, a resident of the wilds of Wyoming. Or, a role model. The leaps she took, and the decisions she visited upon when greeted with that proverbial fork, however, had her sticking the landing on all three.

Kaoru is co-author of the seminal book on Kansai-ben (Colloquial Kansai Japanese), an education pioneer, and one heckuva darn good skater for someone who pretty much just started. Life, it seems for her, is always just beginning...

A JAPANESE LANGUAGE PROGRAM LIKE NO OTHER.

Maplopo helps intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese internalize language through the power of story—all in a single learning platform. Maplopo is rigorous, structured, and handcrafted for serious learners of Japanese.