In mid-October, when many seniors were losing sleep as the panic over college application deadlines took hold, one Chapel Hill High senior was spending eight hour days at a computer in Abu Dhabi, competing as a web designer at WorldSkills2017. “It was kind of a problem,” Riley Johnson said about the inconvenient timing of his trip to the Middle East. Then he shrugged and smiled. Riley is a remarkably humble young man, and it’s unlikely he will ever be the one to report the extraordinary achievements he has already garnered in the web development and design field.
Johnson was in grade school when he discovered an old textbook on JavaScript, and his passion for programming caught fire. His first job was programming bike routes for cycling clubs using Google’s mapping API. Then he began freelancing as a web developer and has since worked for Lenovo-- and he hasn’t even finished high school. “Riley has a seemingly endless thirst for knowledge and skill which is coupled with the desire to apply this learning to his immediate contexts,” said Garrison Reid, director of the Academy of Information Technology at Chapel Hill High School. Other than the exceptional mentoring and instruction Johnson has received from Reid, he was completely self-taught until he reached the SkillsUSA competition in web design where he won the gold medal.
Kathi Breweur, director of Career and Technical Education at CHCCS, said “His maturity and skills have impressed me from the first day I met him. He used his skills to create a fire drill app the Chapel Hill High staff members are currently using. The CTE department is very proud of Riley.”
WorldSkills is a biennial event that’s like a vocational skills olympics: hundreds of young people ages 18-23 from nearly 80 countries compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in numerous categories. This year, 11 members from SkillsUSA traveled to Abu Dhabi to test their expertise in areas that include Automobile Technology, Bricklaying, Patisserie and Confectionery, Print Media Technology and Web Design. Johnson was the only high school student to make the American team. He said some web design contestants from around the world had been training with coaches for more than a year to prepare for Abu Dhabi; some were already working on their master’s degrees. Some of the national teams employ psychologists to support the stresses of preparation.
When Johnson won the SkillsUSA gold medal and was chosen to continue on to WorldSkills17, he began his intensive preparation in March. He spent much of the summer with professionals in the industry to learn specific skills required to compete successfully at the conference. Into the fall, Johnson worked outside of school on projects assigned and reviewed by the team of coaches.
The format of four consecutive days of competition in Abu Dhabi might have occasionally left him wishing he could just work on college applications like his high school peers. Each morning, he sat at his assigned computer station, in the midst of a crowded convention center. Each of the 35 web design contestants learned that day’s challenge at 9:00 and then had eight hours to complete each assignment - all in public view, with people streaming by, or stopping to watch. “It was a little terrifying,” Johnson said.
Although none of the 11 American contestants earned a medal, the experience was clearly instructive in many ways. Johnson learned what it’s like to compete on an international stage, and his many medals along the way to Abu Dhabi distinguish him from multitudes of young web designers.
Now that Johnson is back at Chapel Hill High, he’s looking toward college - where he hopes to study computer engineering and economics. He’s exploring ideas for financial technology apps. Of course, that’s just the beginning. While he’s still in high school, he continues to make a powerful impression on his teachers and peers. Garrison Reid said, “To his peers, he motivates them in pushing their internal competitive drive to succeed at state conferences. To me, as a technology teacher, he shows that dedication and passion for the concepts and tools taught in our courses can accomplish great things outside the classroom. As the SkillsUSA chapter advisor at CHHS, it's an incredible honor to have students this passionate in trade and industry concepts, and experiencing success at the state, national and world competition levels.”
Although Johnson doesn’t know where he’ll end up studying after graduation, he smiled when he said, “I want to help train the next web designer competing from Chapel Hill High.”
To read more about WorldSkills2017: https://www.worldskills.org/what/competitions/wsc2017/
