Inside an ISB classroom where curiosity sparks new possibilities, courage turns failure into progress, and students are empowered to make a difference
At 4:00 in the morning, most of the ISB campus was still dark.
Outside the robotics room, however, two students were waiting with coffee, a plan, and a robot that was not quite ready.
Thailand’s national VEX robotics competition was only days away. The students needed more time in the arena to perfect their robot’s autonomous code, but the space was occupied throughout the school day and after school.
So they approached robotics and engineering teacher Mike Bycraft with an unusual request.
Could they come to school at 2:00 AM?
Mike negotiated a more reasonable time.
“I thought, no way. They’re not going to come in at four,” he remembers.
But at 4:00 AM, they were there.
For hours, the students tested their robot, studied its movements, adjusted the code, and tried again. Each attempt revealed something new. Each mistake brought them closer to the solution they were searching for.
When competition day arrived, the robot performed exactly as intended.
The team won the tournament, the Skills Award, and the Excellence Award, becoming the first team in Thailand to achieve the VEX Triple Crown.
It was an extraordinary achievement, but the trophies tell only part of the story.
The more important story began long before that early morning. It began with a teacher who believes that students should have the freedom to experiment, the confidence to fail, and the opportunity to discover what they can create.
It is a story about curiosity, courage, and empowerment in action.
Seeing possibilities in everyday things
Mike’s journey into design and engineering began when he was a middle school student.
Nintendo had recently arrived, but Mike found the controllers difficult to use. For the first time, he could not do something as well as he wanted, and he was not willing to simply accept that frustration.
Mike and his father went to Radio Shack, took the controllers apart, explored the components inside, and built customised versions that worked better for him.
“It was really empowering,” Mike says. “It was this idea that you can change things and make them fit for you, and then that idea that you can fit things for other people.”
That experience changed the way Mike looked at the world.
A controller was no longer a finished object that had to be used exactly as it was. Neither was a bicycle, a machine, or any other piece of technology. Each could be opened, understood, adapted, and improved.
What began as a solution to a personal challenge became a belief that would eventually shape his teaching.
When something does not work, ask why.
Take a closer look.
Imagine another possibility.
Then begin building.
The question that changed everything
Years later, during Mike’s third year as a physics teacher at Green Valley High School in Nevada, a freshman named Jake Lee walked into his classroom with a question.
“Do we have a robotics team here?”
The answer was no.
Mike had never coached robotics. He had watched competitions, but he had no experience building a programme or leading a team.
Still, he saw an opportunity in Jake’s question.
Mike wrote a grant, secured one robotics kit, and helped Jake establish the school’s first robotics team.
Their first competition was a difficult one.
“We just got annihilated,” Mike says.
They could have decided that robotics was not for them. Instead, they returned to the classroom and began examining what had gone wrong.
They rebuilt. They redesigned. They learned.
Season after season, the students grew more capable and the team became more competitive. By Jake’s senior year, they were achieving strong results.
Jake later attended university and began a career at NASA.
He and Mike stayed in touch. Years later, Jake visited Mike while he was teaching in Korea and shared his experience with a new generation of students.
“It can all be traced back to this one student,” Mike says.
One student asked a question. One teacher was willing to say, “Let’s try.” From that exchange came a robotics programme, a journey to NASA, and an entirely new direction in Mike’s professional life.
Sometimes, a life changing journey begins before anyone in the room knows where it will lead.
Learning what to do when things go wrong
In robotics, failure is almost guaranteed.
A wheel slips. A sensor reads the environment incorrectly. A piece of code produces an unexpected result. A robot that worked perfectly yesterday behaves differently today.
In Mike’s classroom, these moments are not interruptions to learning.
They are the learning.
“Failure is never the last step,” he tells his students. “You built the thing. You made the thing. It didn’t work the way you wanted. What’s next? How do we fix it?”
Students are even required to create failure videos. They record a moment when their robot does not perform as intended, identify what happened, and explain what they learned from the experience.
Instead of hiding mistakes, they study them.
Instead of treating an unsuccessful test as the end of the project, they see it as information that can guide the next version.
Mike also designs challenges with different levels of difficulty. An Alpha challenge provides an accessible starting point. A Beta challenge encourages students to stretch their abilities. An Omega challenge is intentionally difficult and may not be completed by everyone.
Students are not penalised if they do not reach the Omega level. Without the fear of losing marks, however, many choose to attempt it anyway.
They keep going because the challenge has become personal. They want to know whether their idea can work. They want to discover what they are capable of creating.
This is what courage can look like in a classroom.
It is not the absence of mistakes. It is the willingness to examine them, learn from them, and begin again.
A classroom where play has purpose
Walk into Mike’s classroom and you are unlikely to find students sitting silently in rows.
They are building, moving, discussing, and exchanging ideas. Components cover the workbenches. Robots take unexpected forms. One team’s design may look completely different from the robot beside it.
The room feels creative, active, and alive.
A colleague once described Mike’s classroom as a place that demonstrated the importance of play. Mike considers it one of the best compliments he has ever received.
“School, to me, should be fun,” he says. “Being able to get up and move around and create is really powerful.”
In this classroom, play is not separate from serious learning. It creates the conditions for it.
Play gives students permission to experiment before they know the answer. It invites them to follow an idea, test a possibility, and explore what happens next.
Mike encourages students to move beyond familiar designs and create something of their own. An original idea may not initially perform as well as a conventional solution, but that does not mean the attempt has failed.
“That’s where innovation comes from,” he says.
When students feel safe trying something different, curiosity begins to turn into creativity. They learn to trust their ideas and see themselves as designers, engineers, and problem solvers.
They are no longer simply following instructions.
They are creating possibilities.
What cannot be placed on a trophy shelf
Mike enjoys winning.
As a former state champion wrestling coach, he wants ISB’s robotics teams to compete successfully, represent Thailand, and add more trophies to the display outside the robotics room.
But he also knows that the most meaningful outcomes cannot be placed on a shelf.
Robotics teaches students how to communicate when they are under pressure. They learn to divide responsibilities, listen to different perspectives, support their teammates, and respond constructively when something breaks.
They bring together mathematics, physics, coding, engineering, writing, and reflection to solve problems that do not come with one prescribed answer.
Mike has watched students enter Grade 9 barely able to place a functioning robot on the field. By Grades 11 and 12, those same students are leading teams, sharing their knowledge, and approaching complex challenges with confidence.
“It’s not always about the trophies,” he says. “They’re learning a lot and they’re growing.”
That growth will remain with them long after the competition ends.
Students may not all become engineers, but they will carry the ability to collaborate, adapt, think critically, and persevere into university, their careers, and the communities they will help shape.
Engineering for something greater
For Mike, the future of technology is not only about what can be invented.
It is also about who can be helped.
As coding, robotics, and 3D printing become increasingly accessible, more people can use these tools to address challenges within their own communities.
Mike is particularly inspired by crowdsourced prosthetic designs that can be shared digitally and printed for children living in remote areas. He also sees possibilities in accessibility tools, renewable energy, sustainable batteries, and technologies that make everyday life easier for people with disabilities.
ISB students have access to powerful knowledge, tools, and resources. Mike wants them to understand that this access gives them both agency and responsibility.
“Obviously, it’s cool to have robotics and win trophies and go to tournaments,” he says. “But more so, how do we change the world? How do we do more with what we have?”
That question brings the learning full circle.
Curious students ask how something works and imagine how it could work better.
Courageous students test their ideas, face setbacks, and try again.
Empowered students recognise that what they know and what they create can improve someone else’s life.
The next question is waiting
Mike often says that he is trying to create the classroom he would have wanted as a student.
It is a classroom filled with high expectations, hands on learning, strong relationships, and the freedom to play. It is a place where students are encouraged to begin even when they do not know exactly where an idea will lead.
Seventeen years before Mike shared this story, one student walked into his classroom and asked whether the school had a robotics team.
That question led to one kit.
The kit became a team.
The team helped launch a career at NASA.
Today, somewhere inside Mike’s classroom at ISB, another student may be looking at a problem differently for the first time. Another student may be preparing to test an idea, take something apart, or ask a question that has never been asked before.
No one knows where that question will lead.
But there is probably a robotics kit waiting to help answer it.