Cool Beans! A BeanBots story.

My wife and I have lovingly and intentionally chosen to homeschool our daughter. We made that decision for a number of reasons, many of which I won't get into here, but one of the biggest was our desire to give her the freedom and opportunity to explore her own passions.

As a dad with more passion projects than I probably have time for, I'm always looking for ways to connect with my daughter through the things we love to do together. LEGOs, music, video games, science experiments, and robotics are just a few of the things that fill our afternoons and evenings. Some of my favorite moments as a father are when our curiosity overlaps, and we get to learn, build, create, and occasionally fail together.

Professionally, I spend much of my time doing something very similar. I teach robotics to middle and high school students, and I serve as an adjunct professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, where I get to introduce college students to the joy of making things with technology.

And I truly, genuinely love what I do.

There's a moment in robotics education that never gets old. It's that moment when a student has spent days, weeks, or sometimes months designing, building, troubleshooting, rebuilding, and troubleshooting some more. They've encountered frustrations, made mistakes, and probably questioned whether their creation would ever work.

And then, suddenly, it moves.

For the first time, something they imagined, designed, and built comes to life.

The look on their face is priceless. It's this overwhelming combination of disbelief, excitement, pride, and joy. They realize that they made that happen. Something that didn't exist before now exists because of their creativity, persistence, and hard work.

There are few feelings in education greater than witnessing that moment.

But with BeanBots, I got to experience something I hadn't quite experienced before. I got to share that joy not only with my students and their families, but with my very own daughter.

Building More Than Robots

When I first started planning the BeanBots robotics club, I knew we were taking on something ambitious.

The particular robot we chose to build was certainly designed with teenagers in mind. The mechanical complexity, tools, assembly processes, and technical challenges were well beyond what most people would typically expect from an eight-year-old.

But I also knew something else.

I knew what my daughter was capable of when she was given the right tools, encouragement, patience, and opportunity. And if she could take on this challenge, why couldn't other eight-year-olds?

The answer wasn't to make the project easier. It was to make the learning more accessible.

We needed scaffolding. We needed patience. And most importantly, we needed strong support.

So I recruited members of the high school robotics team RouxBots FRC team 9405 to serve as mentors for BeanBots.

And that created the first of several beautiful full-circle moments.

Students whom I've spent years teaching, coaching, challenging, and encouraging were now standing on the other side of the learning experience. They were becoming the teachers. They were explaining concepts, helping little hands navigate complicated assemblies, celebrating small victories, and learning that leadership sometimes means stepping back and letting friction of failure teach the lesson - which is the hardest part of mentoring.

As an educator, watching my students become mentors was every bit as rewarding as watching the younger students build their robots.

And as a father, watching my daughter learn from the very students I've had the privilege of teaching was something particularly special.

It reminded me that education is so much bigger than the information we teach. It's about the confidence we build, the relationships we nurture, and the opportunities we create for others.

A Little Red Bean

But perhaps the most meaningful full-circle moment came when I got home and found myself looking at a piece of artwork my wife had painted eight years ago. When she was pregnant with our daughter, we followed one of those pregnancy calendars that compares the size of a growing baby to everyday objects. At one point, our little girl was approximately the size of a bean.

And being who we are, we ran with it.

We affectionately nicknamed this mysterious little growing miracle Baby Red Bean.

My wife even painted artwork of a second line of zoo animals and the name of the band "The Red Beans" to commemorate that nickname, and we even had jars of red beans at the baby shower come to think of it, long before we knew who our daughter would become, what she would love, or what adventures we would share together.

Eight years later, that same Baby Red Bean has built a robot with the Krewe of Red Beans.

I couldn't have planned that connection if I tried.

Growing Something Bigger

As we closed out this short chapter of BeanBots 11/4/2026 at the Krewe of Red Beans, I found myself feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

Gratitude for the families who trusted us to challenge their children. Gratitude for the high school students who gave their time and talents to mentor the next generation. Gratitude for the Krewe of Red Beans for providing a place where creativity, community, and curiosity could come together.

And gratitude for the opportunity to experience all of this through two very different but deeply connected perspectives: as an instructor of BeanBots and as the proud father of one.

We set out to build robots, but somewhere along the way, we built friendships, confidence, leadership, and a community.

We watched children discover that they were capable of more than they imagined. We watched teenagers discover the joy of teaching. And we watched friendships grow between people who might never have crossed paths if not for a pile of robot parts and a shared challenge.

And perhaps that's what this whole experience has really been about. Not just building robots, but helping little beans grow.

Thank you, BeanBots, for letting me be part of your story. And thank you for becoming such a meaningful part of ours.

This book is far from over. We're just preparing to write the next chapter.