“There’s no wrong way to get started,” says VEX Robotics Vice President of Global Educational Strategy Jason McKenna.

He’s referring to the process of implementing STEM education into a classroom curriculum.

Jason, who is an educator and EdTech leader, is the author of What STEM Can Do for Your Classroom: Improving Student Problem Solving, Collaboration, and Engagement, Grades K–6.

And he knows, from experience, the ways in which STEM in general–and robotics, in particular–can keep students engaged in learning.

An educator’s epiphany

At the start of his teaching career, Jason says, he was a traditional classroom teacher in Pennsylvania.

Feeling burnt-out, he began exploring ways to spark students’ imagination and get them more involved with their own educational careers.

He gave his students a survey, to find out what they’d like to learn. Their responses surprised him.

They wanted to learn to build and code robots.

With considerable apprehension, Jason nevertheless implemented his first classroom STEM activity: a robotics class.

After that first experience, he says, he was “hooked”.

The journey

Fast-forward to today.

Jason has been working with global educational robotics leader VEX Robotics for more than eight years. With the theme of “educational robotics for everyone”, VEX Robotics offers robotics kits and activity challenges for students, pre-K right up to university level.

They also offer free educational resources for teachers–including their VEXcode VR virtual robotics platform, where educators can teach and learn coding!

And annually, VEX Robotics offers numerous student competitions, including their global VEX V5 Robotics Competition, for middle-school and high school students. Recently, they announced the theme, “Push Back” for the V5 Competition for the 2025 – 2026 season.

Jason, who published his book in 2023, talked about his journey into STEM education, some of the concepts in his book that may surprise traditional educators, and how VEX Robotics illustrates these principles while allowing students to develop hands-on skills for their future careers.

On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:

• How teaching STEM reignited Jason’s passion for teaching–and his students’ interest in learning;

• How he first became involved in educational robotics;

• His recollections of his first robot-coding class;

• How robotics solved problems with which he’d “struggled”, previously, as a teacher;

• How VEX managed to “hook” more humanities-oriented students on robotics;

• Ways in which VEX Robotics’ curriculum fosters creativity as a habit;

• The “four-c” model of creativity which Jason outlines in his book;

• Where to find VEX Robotics’ free resources and curricula;

• The concept of “glorious failure” from Jason’s book, and how students put it into practice as members of a robotics team;

• How VEX’s new robotics platform allows students to re-frame “failure” as a process of iteration;

• A closer look at VEX Aim, the next step in VEX’s computer-science learning pathway (this is an intro to teaching artificial intelligence!);

• How VEX is teaching students “soft skills” for their future careers;

• How teachers can involve their students in VEX competitions;

• How a teacher can implement STEM or STEAM in their classroom right now, at no cost.