For months, they’ve been programming robots, developing video games, building drag racers and brushing up on accounting and public speaking.
And this week, hundreds of D.C. middle and high school students are flexing these skills at the University of the District of Columbia.
The nearly 100 competitions at the D.C. Career and Technical Student Organizations’ State Leadership Conference began Tuesday and run through Wednesday.
“Students are doing public speaking, students are participating in engineering and the drones and the video game design, but they’re also doing health science. They are doing CPR competitions,” said Candice Mott, the performance accountability coordinator at D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education.
“It is taking the things that you learn in the classroom and the students are getting the chance to expand it more,” Mott said. “Then they get a chance to work with other kids here in the city.”
Jason Dominguez and Jeremiah White, both sophomores at Paul Public Charter School, are on a team that created a video game called “Mindless.”
The team coded, designed and even voice-acted the retro 2D beat-’em-up game featuring twin brothers that fight A.I.-powered robots.
“Like a ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ type of game. I really like it. It’s good,” White told WTOP.
The team developed the game over eight months. When they started, they had no idea they would be able to achieve such a feat.
“As we were doing it, and with the resources we had, we realized anything is possible when it comes to making the game,” Dominguez said.
“These are things that kids are doing (in high school). I’m thinking, ‘You have to be an adult to do this,'” Michael Babb, the career and technical educator at Paul Public Charter School, said.
“And now kids doing at this level — ninth graders, eighth graders — doing this stuff.”
He said he often has to kick students like Dominguez and White out of the classroom because they will spend hours working on projects such as video games and robots they themselves are programming.
“The robots are actually amazing, seeing that the kids actually built this thing from start to finish to be able to handle simplest tasks,” Babb said.
“Like picking up an egg or moving a garbage can up and down, or getting something to flip over.”
The robots were put to the test at the competition. An obstacle course had them moving objects while navigating rough terrain.
Babb said competitions and projects like these help students find their passions and apply classroom teachings to their own research. The students also learn from each other.
“We want to see kids learning from other kids, especially in the space where people are now. They’re not communicating as much as we used to in the past because of social media,” Babb said.
Winners of this week’s competitions have a chance to compete nationally.
“It’s the exposure that changes lives, seeing what’s out there,” Babb said.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2026 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
