Happy Kids Robotics is a robotics lab at 1311 S Grand Ave in Glendora, California. We teach children aged 6 to 14 to design, build and program robots, and we take teams to VEX IQ tournaments.
// 01 · The room
The field is always out
Most places that teach robotics pack the field away between sessions. Ours stays on the floor, on competition tiles, with the perimeter up. A student who wants to test an idea can test it in the same minute they had it.
Along one wall there is a mural somebody drew by hand: the Voyager probe with its instruments labelled, an Apollo launch configuration, circuit diagrams, pendulums, E equals mc squared, s equals one half a t squared. It is not decoration. It is the stuff on the other side of the door the students are walking through.
Parts live in labelled bins along the benches. Laptops are on the tables. Nothing is behind glass.
The wall, drawn by hand, in the Glendora lab
// 02 · How we teach
Four rules we actually follow
Most of the teaching happens crouched over the field
Rule 01
The student makes the decision
A coach can tell you the answer in four seconds. We mostly do not. The student proposes something, we ask what will happen, they try it, and then we talk about what did happen. Slower, and it sticks.
Rule 02
Change one thing at a time
When a robot stops working, the instinct is to change five things and run it again. We teach the opposite: change one, test, write it down. That is the whole method, and it transfers to everything.
Rule 03
If you cannot explain it, you do not have it yet
Students talk about their own build out loud, to coaches and eventually to judges. It is uncomfortable the first few times. It is also the fastest way to find out which parts they only think they understand.
Rule 04
Failure is scheduled
Nothing works the first time and we say so on day one. A student who expects the first version to fail is free to make it quickly, which is how you get to the good version sooner.
// 03 · Who runs it
Skyler Jin, Founder and Program Director
Happy Kids Robotics was founded by Zixiang Jin, who goes by Skyler. Our programs are coached by a VEX World Champion coach, and that experience is the reason the room is set up the way it is.
What a champion coach brings is not inspiration. It is specificity: knowing that the tower is flexing and that is why the shot is inconsistent, knowing when a gear ratio is the real problem and the code is innocent, knowing what a judge is actually listening for when they ask a thirteen year old what they would change.
We are on S Grand Ave in Glendora, which puts us within a short drive of San Dimas, La Verne, Covina, Azusa, Claremont and Diamond Bar.
Our students arrive from all of those places and from a lot of different starting points. Some have been pulling appliances apart since they were five. Some have never built anything and came because a parent thought they should try. Both are fine. The room is set up for the second kind as much as the first.
We teach in English. Our team also speaks Chinese, so if that is easier for a conversation about your child, say so and we will switch.
Zixiang Jin, who goes by Skyler, is the Founder and Program Director. Our programs are coached by a VEX World Champion coach. You can reach the team at contact@happykidsedu.com.
What does the lab have in it?
A full VEX field on competition tiles, set up and ready rather than packed away. Parts storage along one wall, build benches, laptops, a whiteboard, and a hand-drawn physics mural running the length of the room. Students work on the field, not around it.
Can parents watch?
Yes. Come in, sit down, watch a session. We would rather you saw how the room runs than took our word for it.
Happy Kids 
