Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Jason Flum. I'm a native Tallahassee, and I'm the Director of Cornerstone Learning Community. Whenever I think about my education story, it always goes back to my second grade teacher, Mrs. Newton, at Rutiger Elementary. In early math, you have time test often, and she had us doing these hundred problems, that I remember if they're multiplication or addition or subtraction or what, and it was so difficult. And we couldn't get there, and the class is despondent. You know, that second grade hopelessness, and we would complain. And finally one day, she said, it is possible. I'll do it with you and show you. And she did, and she completed it. And for all of us, second graders, our minds were just, boom, blown. Somehow that moment for me helped to plant the seed of this awareness that our intelligence, our smarts, who we are, isn't static. That it can change, seeing that possibility of something that seemed so impossible. All of a sudden becomes feasible. One of the phrases we use around Cornerstone a whole bunch is fail forward. That we're using our struggle and our challenges and our failure as the building blocks for innovation and opportunity. So really helping students to see that when things are hard, that's the sign that things are learning, that you're moving beyond your comfort zone, and getting into that stretch zone where we begin to be inspired by new ideas, and to take on new challenges. Learning is a whole child and whole person process, and that a lifelong love of learning happens when we embrace the transformation that we undergo whenever we embark on something new. I'm Jason Flum, I am Director of Cornerstone Learning Community. Voices that inspire is sponsored by Leadership Tallahassee, a program of the Tallahassee Chamber, celebrating 35 years of cultivating community leadership.