Using Robotics to Build Kids: Coach Dahai Shares SolversMind’s Education Philosophy at FLL Kickoff Event
SolversMind Robotics Coach Dahai Zhang delivered the “Using Robotics to Build Kids” workshop at the 2025 FLL Kickoff Event at Bayview Glen, sharing how robotics can develop student ownership, creativity, and leadership (FIRST Canada).
By SolversMind Robotics
Published September 28 2025 | Updated August 2026
Reviewed by SolversMind Robotics mentors
A successful robotics program is not measured only by how many awards students win.
The true measure is whether students become independent thinkers, confident problem-solvers, and future leaders.
At the 2025 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Kickoff Event hosted by Bayview Glen, SolversMind Robotics Founder and Coach Dahai Zhang delivered a workshop titled:
“Using Robotics to Build Kids”
This marked the third time SolversMind Robotics has been invited to deliver a workshop at the annual FLL kickoff event, bringing our educational philosophy and years of FIRST experience to new and returning teams across Ontario.
The event provided an opportunity for FLL teams, mentors, parents, and coaches to learn from each other before beginning a new season. More importantly, it created a space for the FIRST community to share ideas about how robotics can become a powerful tool for youth development.
What was the “Using Robotics to Build Kids” workshop about?
Coach Dahai’s workshop focused on a simple but important idea: robotics is a tool for education, not just a competition activity.
The workshop shared SolversMind’s approach to using hands-on robotics projects to develop students’ confidence, creativity, ownership, and problem-solving skills. Rather than focusing only on building a robot that can win matches, the goal is to create an environment where students learn how to think, experiment, communicate, and take responsibility for their own work.
The presentation highlighted several key principles:
Students learn best when they build and create themselves.
Failure is an important part of engineering and learning.
Coaches should guide students, not replace student thinking.
Long-term growth matters more than short-term results.
Robotics should develop people, not just machines.
Coach Dahai shared how SolversMind uses project-based learning to help students experience the complete engineering cycle:
Imagine → Design → Build → Test → Fail → Improve → Explain → Repeat
Through this process, students develop technical skills while also building resilience, communication ability, teamwork, and leadership.
This philosophy has shaped SolversMind’s FLL, FTC, and FRC programs, where students gradually move from learning concepts to taking full ownership of increasingly complex engineering challenges.
Why is the FLL Kickoff Event important for Ontario robotics teams?
The annual FLL Kickoff Event at Bayview Glen brings together new and returning FIRST LEGO League teams from across Ontario to prepare for the upcoming season.
For rookie teams, it provides an introduction to the FIRST experience.
For experienced teams, it offers a chance to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and support the growth of the wider robotics community.
FIRST is built on collaboration.
Teams compete on the field, but they also help each other improve before and after competitions.
Events like this allow mentors, students, and families to learn from different approaches to robotics education.
SolversMind was honoured to contribute by sharing our experiences from multiple years of FIRST participation, including:
Building and mentoring FLL teams
Supporting students as they transition into FTC
Developing FRC Team 10015 Bubbles
Creating student-led engineering and outreach programs
The workshop was attended by students, mentors, and parents who were interested in understanding how to create stronger learning experiences through robotics.
The positive feedback showed that many teams share the same goal:
Not only creating successful competition teams, but creating successful young people.
How does SolversMind define success in robotics education?
At SolversMind, we believe that if the only outcome of robotics education is producing students who know how to build robots, then we have missed the bigger purpose.
A robot is only the project.
The student is the outcome.
Awards are exciting, but they are not the final goal.
The more important questions are:
Can students solve problems independently?
Can they explain their decisions?
Can they recover when their design fails?
Can they teach and support others?
Can they take ownership of a challenge without waiting for someone else to solve it?
These are the skills that students carry into university, careers, and life.
This philosophy has guided SolversMind through years of FIRST programs.
Students who began with LEGO robots have grown into FTC and FRC engineers, programmers, team leaders, mentors, and community ambassadors.
The progression is not only about larger robots.
It is about deeper responsibility.
FLL develops curiosity.
FTC develops technical ownership.
FRC develops systems leadership.
Every stage builds on the previous one.
Why are outreach events important for the FIRST community?
The success of FIRST depends on the people who share their knowledge and support others.
FLL, FTC, and FRC teams are not isolated groups.
They form a connected community where students, mentors, sponsors, and volunteers help each other grow.
SolversMind is grateful to Bayview Glen for continuing to organize this valuable kickoff event every year and creating a space where teams can learn together.
We are also grateful to the students, mentors, and families who continue supporting FIRST robotics across Ontario.
For SolversMind, delivering workshops like “Using Robotics to Build Kids” is another form of outreach.
Our goal is not only to build successful teams.
Our goal is to help more educators, mentors, and students understand the true potential of robotics education.
Because the greatest achievement is not a trophy.
It is seeing a student who once asked:
“Can I do this?”
grow into someone who confidently says:
“I can figure this out.”
That is why we do robotics at SolversMind.
We do not just build robots.
We build kids.
Tags:
FIRST LEGO League, SolversMind Robotics, Bayview Glen, FLL Kickoff, project-based learning, FIRST Core Values, FLL mentors, STEM education, youth leadership, Dahai Zhang, York Region Robotics