Duck Madness is a unique activity never seen before in the middle school, launched by eighth graders Ani Cooper, Inaya Abubeker and seventh graders Renee Palmer, Gia Amol, Aisha Sadim, Aria Jivani, Nandini Parikh, Valentina Dominguez, with the help of Middle School Counselor Rachel Paradise. 

Duck Madness is a new middle school tradition taking place during the month of March. Each week, 50 ducks are hidden all around the middle school, each with a different number on the bottom. 

When students found ducks, they went to the board outside of the Student Support Center. There are numbers on the board that match the numbers under the ducks. Under the board numbers, there will either be an inspirational quote or a golden ticket.  

“The inspirational quotes were from different faculty or celebrities that students in the group admired and felt like the messages were a way to spread positivity,” Paradise said. 

If you get a gold ticket, you can go to Paradise to receive a prize. The prizes grow each week. 

Paradise organized a group of middle school students to meet during lunch with the goal of coming up with a community building activity that everyone will find engaging. They named this group Lunch Bunch. 

The group landed on the Duck Hunt because of its engaging traits. They intended it for a way middle school students to get involved in this activity and talk to each other about it. This way, students could meet new friends and build connections. 

Paradise also wanted students in the Lunch Bunch to get to know each other better. 

“The students in the group were chosen because I wanted to bring people together who I thought might get along but not know each other very well, it was an effort to introduce students to new friends outside of their ‘friend group’,” Paradise said, “I think it was an exciting way for students to work collaboratively on a project for the good of the middle school and build new connections in the process.” 

The students worked for a long time on how to make their ideas work. They navigated cheating problems, difficulty levels and engagement. 

“At first people were looking underneath the numbers to find which numbers had the golden tickets,” Cooper said. “So we took the golden tickets out from under the numbers and we remember which numbers are ‘golden tickets’. Now everyone has to turn in their ducks and we tell them if they got a golden ticket.” 

Currently, the Lunch Bunch meets every Monday during lunch to hide the ducks around the middle school. They have to find good hiding places in a short amount of time.