Before S-Cubed Was Ever a Product, There was David

Before S-Cubed Was Ever a Product, 

There Was David

Long before S-Cubed became a product, and long before I imagined building an AI Coach around it, there was my friend, fellow musician, and international fitness presenter and future National Champion in Aerobic Gymnastics, David Stauffer.

David and I met at an aerobics workshop in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1992. He had majored in music with a piano focus, and he loved fitness, and so did I.  We connected immediately, and we have been close friends ever since.

Soon after we met in 1992, I won a gold medal in Aerobic Gymnastics, and David moved to Europe for an opportunity to begin presenting about fitness internationally. David, or Dave as I call him, was there the night I won, and he watched it "live".  In 1996, he invited me to Italy to help train him for an aerobics competition. It was my first international trip. While we worked together, he took me all over Italy. I remember the places, of course, but what stays with me most is the friend who brought me there...on my first international trip.  He took incredible care of me, making sure I got on the right trains.  With no experience travelling in a different country with a language I didn't know, I needed every bit of help I could get, and he gave it to me.  

In 2008, my husband's job took us to Lausanne, Switzerland of all places.  I stopped teaching during that time.  I became an International Judge for Aerobic Gymnastics, and I was fortunate to get to travel all over Europe representing the USA as a member of the judges panel.  David lived in Milan, about a 3-and-a-half-hour train ride over the Alps.  He decided he wanted to compete again in Aerobic Gymnastics, and he asked me to train him, so he schlepped across the Alps about twice monthly and stayed at our apartment and stayed overnight.  

During my time there, I was creating S-Cubed.  I've written about it here on my blog.  It is an incredibly special place to me because it was where the ideas flowed.  Joe and I came up with the name S-Cubed on a hill outside of that apartment-  Successful Sight Singing-  S-Cubed! 

Weekly, I would send my manuscripts for what I hoped would be a book.  He would write back-  "Too many exclamation points," and much more.  I was trying to capture the essence of the program in a written form.   He read my stuff religiously and sent feedback.  

That mattered so much to me.  I had no idea if anyone would ever care about what I called S-Cubed, but I was feverishly working on it.    

S-Cubed grew in real classrooms, through mistakes, revisions, conversations, and friends and colleagues who were willing to say, "Um...what about this?"  "What if you said it that way?" 

I sent what I wrote to Greg Gilpin, who was very helpful.  He said he would try to get it into the hands of people who might publish it.  He was super gracious about that.  I wrote to Patrick Freer, who had been super with my students at LGPE in New Jersey in the late 1990's, and he gave me publishing advice.  

I appreciated their support.  By 2012, nothing was happening, and I was about to let it go and move on to other stuff.  

Then, in November 2012, my husband, who is in the business world, brought home a business magazine with an article about Teachers Pay Teachers with a focus on Deanna Jump-  a very successful seller on the platform.  Here is a link to the article.

My husband said-  That's how you'll get it out there if you want to get it out there.  

The rest of that story is well-documented history, filled with a lot of hard work that was and is a game-changer in my life and in the lives of teachers and students all over the world.  

And now David is with me again at this new juncture-

David is one of the people testing the new S-Cubed AI Coach ahead of its October 6 official release on Studio.com. He is bringing it the kinds of questions that teachers actually face, then changing the circumstances to see how useful its guidance is.  He has tested it with all sorts of angles...from classroom management to new students arriving who don't speak English to an administrator giving him his dream schedule after he was only supposed to see his students twice daily.  When the "admin" gave him his students 5 days weekly, the AI Coach adapted immediately.  

These are the moments I was thinking about when I built the Coach. A curriculum can lay out a sequence of lessons, but a teacher still has to respond to the class in front of them. The schedule changes. A student needs a different way in. Yesterday’s lesson does not land. A new teacher needs a practical idea before tomorrow morning.

During my own teaching career, I often wished I had an experienced teacher nearby to ask about those moments. Usually, I did not. I wanted the S-Cubed AI Coach to give teachers a place to talk through a situation, consider options, and make their own informed decisions.

The teacher brings the part that matters most.

Watching David test the Coach has reinforced something for me: its suggestions are only part of the conversation. David knows his students and his school. He notices what the tool has missed. He can push back, add context, and decide whether an idea would work in his classroom.  I kept telling David to give the Coach as much info about what he was experiencing as possible so the Coach can help him the most.  

That is what I hope every teacher will do with it. Ask a question. Change a detail. Tell it when an answer does not fit. Keep your professional judgment at the center.

David also brings a lifetime of experience and a friendship that no software could reproduce. He has shared deeply personal stories in his own writing on Substack. Those stories are his to tell, and I value the trust and humanity behind them.  More on David's personal story later- 

A friendship that has come full circle

In 1992, we met because music and fitness happened to bring us to the same aerobics workshop. 

In 1996, we traveled through Italy while I helped him prepare for a competition. Years later, he helped me test early S-Cubed ideas. Now he is putting the AI Coach through its paces with the unpredictable situations a teacher encounters in a classroom.

I am grateful that he is asking hard questions and changing the variables. That is how I learn what needs to get better. Before I ask other teachers to trust this resource, I wanted people to use it, challenge it, and tell me where it helps and where it falls short.

On October 6, I will demonstrate the S-Cubed AI Coach "live" and share more about how teachers can use it. Before then, I wanted you to meet one of the people helping me make it the best it can be.  Sign up here to get reminders on Facebook.

My friend David. Thirty-four years of friendship, and apparently we are still testing things together.

Here are screenshots from the testing he has sent to me.  

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Here is the one in which he told the Coach that his principal came to him and told him that instead of seeing his students twice weekly, starting the next day, he would see them daily for 50 minutes...his dream schedule...but a nightmare for a new user of S-Cubed.  Thankfully, he had the coach.  

Here is a partial sample of some of the other screenshots from his testing of the app.  

He focused largely on Classroom Management issues in these screenshots, but he has tested it with a variety of questions.  

At the heart of all of this, there are still two human beings who met in 1992 and have spent more than three decades showing up for each other. David was there before anyone knew the name S-Cubed, when it was simply an idea I was trying to make work for real teachers in real classrooms. And now, all these years later, he is here again, helping me test something completely new using new technology. That matters to me because this work has never really been about a product or a piece of technology. It has always been about people. 

David knows something about that in ways far deeper than S-Cubed. He has chosen to write openly on Substack about his struggle with addiction, telling the truth about something that so many people live with quietly—teachers included, or the people they love. I hope some of them find his story and recognize that they are not alone. There is something profoundly human to me about both of us, at this stage of our lives, still trying to take what we have learned and use it to help people. That is also how I am choosing to approach AI. Not recklessly, and not without questions, but moving toward it thoughtfully rather than running from it out of fear. I did something similar in 2013 when I put S-Cubed into the world, long before I knew whether anyone would care. Had I allowed fear to make that decision for me, none of this would exist today. So I am moving toward this new technology the same way I have tried to move through most of my life: cautiously when caution is warranted, but ultimately from a place of love, curiosity, and service. The objective has not changed. I want to help teachers. And behind this new tool are real people, real friendship, real struggle, real history, and a great deal of love.

This is my friend, David Stauffer.  And again, Here is where he is sharing his struggle with addiction.

Thank you, sweetie!  

Love, D