Resilience Through Coding & Robotics: How Trial and Error Builds Perseverance

The first time I introduced my students to coding a robot, I had this magical vision in my head: little machines zipping gracefully across the classroom floor, students clapping like they’d just watched a Broadway show, and me beaming like the proud director of this high-tech orchestra.

Reality check: the robots spun in circles like confused puppies, collided into walls, and one ambitious little bot decided to stage a jailbreak straight under the cupboard. The students didn’t clap, they laughed.

Loudly.

At me, mostly.

But here’s the thing: that chaos was exactly the lesson I wanted them to learn.

Coding and robotics is essentially the art of trial and error on repeat. Write a line of code, watch the robot wobble, tweak it, watch it wobble differently. At first, kids get frustrated. “Why isn’t it working?!”

 But somewhere between the fifteenth loop error and the robot’s dramatic nose dive off the table, they discover something golden: perseverance.

I always remind my students (and sometimes myself): robots don’t fail, they just give you feedback. If the bot zooms backwards instead of forwards, it’s not being rebellious : it’s simply showing you where your logic went sideways. The more mistakes we make, the closer we get to the solution.

One of my favourite moments was when a student triumphantly shouted, “It worked!” only to realise his robot was indeed moving forward just upside down. We both laughed so hard that it became a story we still retell. But the real victory wasn’t the robot finally crawling in the right direction, it was the student’s patience, persistence, and humour in the face of “failure.”

And honestly, isn’t that the skill we all need in life? Resilience.

Whether it’s debugging code, facing a tough exam, or even navigating the trickier algorithms of adulthood, the ability to keep going, try again, and laugh at the bumps along the way is priceless.

So, yes our robots will continue to crash, beep indignantly, and occasionally attempt to eat their own wires (imaginary).

But every failed attempt is a step closer to success. And in the process, students don’t just learn to code robots they learn to code resilience into their own lives.

And that, in my opinion, is the real magic show.