Today Agoura High School has a flourishing robotics program–but did you know that four years ago this program was virtually unrecognizable?
Mr. Guce, the teacher who took robotics to its present heights, paints a nightmare picture of what robotics used to be. As he recalls, “In the early stage robotics didn’t join competitions; we didn’t have arenas; we didn’t have V5 motors, our tech was like ten years behind.” But beyond the material lackings of the early robotics program was a lack of care in robotics. Robotics was the class people took when they dropped out of all the easiest classes. Mr. Guce puts it simply and elegantly: “It was just an elective.”
Against all odds, however, during Mr. Guce’s short career teaching the robotics program, it has undergone an incredible take-off. “Now we have six V5 brains, we have aluminum metals, we are joining competitions for three straight years,” Mr. Guce says in a satisfied tone, “and, again, it’s been a big jump from the wooden DIY arena that we had.” I personally was in the latest of those competitions. The Agoura team’s robot lost to the third best team in the entire area by only a narrow margin—quite a different picture from only four years before.
So who is this person who did so much for robotics at Agoura? How did he do it?
Mr. John Guce is a lively, enthusiastic young man who in addition to teaching Robotics 1, 2, and 3 also teaches Physics in the Universe at Agoura High School. His easy-going nature and helpfulness in all respects have won him the hearts of his students–or at least those who don’t mind having to learn in his classes. Moreover, he cares about robotics, and he cares about giving students the chance to care about robotics too. “I love building,” he says. “I love engineering. And I think this is one way to help students build creativity, and help them transform their ideas into something tangible. […] And you just need the space, and the opportunity to do it.”
“Everything started 4 years ago,” Mr. Guce begins. “Nobody wanted to take [teach] robotics. I said, ‘maybe I should give it a try.’” And give it a try, he did.
Mr. Guce immediately fell in love with the program. But he wasn’t done there. Mr. Guce was clear about his ambitions to reform robotics for good. “I wanted to reinvent the wheel for robotics,” he relates. “Start from scratch.”
But how to do this? Mr. Guce had a simple solution: find the right people. “I wanted them [the students] to be more interested,” he confides, “and I wanted them to be more passionate and devote more time to the class. I don’t want it [the robotics program] to become populated with people who don’t like robotics and are just forced to for an elective, because they might not show interest in the topic or the class.” His strategy worked beautifully. Robotics achieved the success Mr. Guce had envisioned, and he attributes this all to “the help of people who joined robotics during my first years.” He looks me in the eye and says, “Those people have given countless times. [They] have helped rebuild the program itself.”
And it’s not just the students who have been integral to robotics. Mr. Guce also talks about “the help of people around us like the admin, people from Calabasas, especially Mikey Young, who donated his arena to us.” Mikey Young is the teacher of robotics at Calabasis and he was Mr. Guce’s mentor. He was also the one who helped inspire Mr. Guce to change robotics for the better.
I was still confused. “How do you make sure people who don’t care about robotics don’t take the class?” I asked. Mr. Guce replies, “I don’t make sure. I feel like I’m not gatekeeping anyone from joining robotics–anyone can join robotics–but if you’re truly passionate enough, you will stay in robotics. People who are in robotics 2 and robotics 3 are people who want to do robotics. You can try it for a year, in robotics 1, but if you stay, I know that you love robotics.”
Mr. Guce’s plan seems to have worked. “You can see it,” he says, “the passion they [the students] have in the class. We may have a low number of students who join robotics, but I can tell you that ninety percent of those people who join in love robotics, love technology, want to learn.”
Mr. Guce’s story of triumph can teach us all something. Power isn’t in the individual; it’s in the people collectively. And if you can find the right people, the people who care, you can do incredible things. And luckily for Mr. Guce–luckily for the rest of us–Agoura is a place where you can find those people. You, your friends; when we come together with intent and purpose, we all have the power to create lasting change.
Source
- Guce, John. Personal Interview. 21 November 2025.
