In 2025, thousands of educators across 73 countries completed a VEX Robotics certification, gaining the confidence to empower students and create authentic moments of learning. From the launch of VEX AIM to our most successful VEX Robotics Educators Conference to date, we have observed how teachers are advancing learning through mentorship and presence. Explore how we are prioritizing human connection in an age of AI with these reflections from our VP of Global Educational Strategy, Jason McKenna.
Jump to a section to read:
- Holding the Line on Learning: A Reflection on 2025
- Recap 2025 with VEX Robotics
- Breaking Boundaries with the Game Design Committee at VEX Robotics
- VEX AIM is Now Available!
- The 2025 VEX Robotics World Championship and Educators Conference Are Here!
- What Engineering Interns Taught Us (That We Didn’t Expect)
- Low-Friction Learning: How Small Routines Unlock Big Thinking
- From Zero to the VEX Robotics World Championship: How the IQ Pandas Iterated Their Way to Dallas
Holding the Line on Learning: A Reflection on 2025
When Dana Goldstein asked in the New York Times this spring whether America had given up on children’s learning, the question landed with unsettling clarity. Amid a year preoccupied with artificial intelligence—its potential, its dangers, and its impact on classrooms—a more essential question has received little attention: Are our students genuinely learning?
It’s a question I’ve carried with me from Melbourne to Dallas, from conference keynotes to classrooms lined with VEX robots and engineering notebooks. What I’ve seen, again and again, is this: while political leaders debate cell phone bans, and while algorithms churn out lesson plans, real teachers are still doing the real work. They are holding the line on learning. And they are doing it in the most analog of ways: with presence. With questions. With hands inked with dry-erase markers and robots built from trial, error, and joy.
If 2025 was the year of AI in education, it was also, for us here at VEX Robotics, the year of teacher PD. Thousands of educators across 73 countries completed a VEX certification this year. And what the research showed us is simple, but profound: the more confident a teacher feels in their skills, the more empowered they are to create authentic moments of learning in their classrooms. No algorithm can substitute for that kind of empowerment.
So in a world increasingly enamored with machine-generated content, we’ve stayed committed to something messier, more human: investing in teachers. Because behind every robot drivetrain, every student who says, “I didn’t think I could do this,” there’s a teacher who believed it first.
In some ways, education this year reminded me of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with veins of gold. Instead of hiding the fractures, kintsugi artists honor them. The break becomes part of the object’s story. And in many classrooms I visited this year, I saw kintsugi in practice.
There were teachers adapting STEM lessons to incorporate Universal Design for Learning. Others reworked curriculum in response to internet outages. I remember seeing my friend Abbu Saidu in London this year and again at VEX Worlds and discussing how we can continue to help his students in Nigeria, half a world away from me but just one conversation apart.
Professional Development as Repair
This year, we were proud to publish a study that showed how targeted PD can fill the cracks, not with plaster, but with purpose. Teachers who completed VEX certifications didn’t just gain skills. They reported renewed confidence, particularly those with mid- and late-career experience. That detail matters. It suggests that after years of disruption, seasoned educators aren’t giving up; they’re gearing up.
Robots, Not Replacements
AI, of course, loomed large in 2025. At the VEX Robotics World Championship and the VEX Robotics Educators Conference, people packed sessions on AI in education. There is a hunger for understanding, for cautious optimism. What does AI mean for lesson planning? For assessment? For learning?
But amid all the speculation, I keep returning to a simple observation from a student I met in a classroom here in Pittsburgh this fall. After her group finished presenting their VEX GO build, she said: “We practiced this with our teacher three times. He didn’t tell us the answer. He just kept asking if we thought it would work.”
That’s not an algorithm. That’s mentorship.
AI can generate a rubric. But it can’t notice the kid in the corner who keeps glancing at the parts in their kit, unsure of how to get started. AI can summarize the Renaissance, but it can’t sense when a student is unsure of themselves. That’s what teachers do.
Milestones in Motion
This year marked a turning point for product innovation at VEX Robotics. We launched VEX AIM, our first platform to integrate AI directly into classroom robotics. Paired with our customizable drone, VEX AIR, these tools don’t just prepare students for the future; they empower students to build their own future.
The VEXcode 4.6 release saw the incorporation of high contrast blocks, reorganization of the toolbox, bluetooth and AI Vision Sensor support for VEX IQ, robot to robot communication for VEX AIM, and much more.
We also helped lead a new online training program for professionals in Southeast Asia, supporting teachers from Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Over four months, educators engaged in collaborative lesson planning that wove together Computational Thinking (CT) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The impact was unmistakable: teachers moved from basic use of CT elements like decomposition to more advanced practices such as pseudocoding, debugging, and data analysis. Their lesson plans grew richer and more inclusive with every iteration, offering multiple means of engagement and expression for students.
And we celebrated our most successful VEX Robotics Educators Conference to date. There was energy in every corner: engaging presentations, hands-on workshops, hallway conversations that turned into lesson plans. The kind of electricity that happens only when you put passionate educators in the same room and ask, “What if?”
Every one of these moments was a crack filled with gold.
Looking Ahead: Filling the Cracks
As we move into 2026, we do so clear-eyed. When people ask me, “Who is VEX Robotics?,” my answer is simple: we lead the world in creating meaningful learning experiences for students. Not just in the sense of technical skills, though those matter. Not just in terms of access and scale, though we’re proud of both. What makes VEX different is that we start with the learner and the learning, not the tool, and build from there.
In the coming year, we’ll continue to expand what’s possible. We’ll grow our global network of certified educators. We’ll deepen our investment in accessibility. We’ll release exciting new products. And we’ll do it all with humility. The classroom will always be a place of surprise, a place where curiosity can’t be scripted and breakthroughs never arrive on schedule.
Because learning is not a product. It’s a process. It’s the quiet moment a student realizes they can debug a line of code. It’s the pride on a teacher’s face when they see their students present their engineering notebook with confidence. It’s a crack, filled with gold.
A Final Reflection
My favorite book this year was Paris in Ruins, by Sebastian Smee. In the book, Smee connects the fragility of civilization to its beauty. Smee shares the way great art, and great learning, emerge from moments of collapse. Freud once wrote that in the face of transience, we have three options: despair, rebellion, or appreciation.
I choose appreciation.
Appreciation for every teacher who stayed late to redo a lesson plan. For every VEX Robotics team that redid their intake system, not because a rubric told them to, but because they wanted to see if it would work. For every volunteer and Event Partner that spent hours on a Saturday running a robotics competition. For every student who failed, tried again, and discovered that resilience is part of the engineering design process.
This year may have been filled with cracks. But what I saw, again and again, was gold.
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Thank you for an incredible year of robotics, VEX Community! You’re all an important part of what makes our community of students, engineers, mentors, educators, parents, and robotics enthusiasts so special to so many. From everyone at VEX Robotics, we hope your holiday season is joyful, restful, and gets you ready for another exciting year! We look forward to what 2026 brings. Happy New Year!
Take a look back at a year’s worth of news: