March Madness: Snacks Edition

It was March of 2020.

The world was grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and, like most in the country, our school district had transitioned from in-person instruction to virtual learning.

It was rough. Teachers were learning how to engage students through a learning management system and Zoom, something previously foreign to many if not most educators. For the record, our teachers and staff absolutely crushed it.

As a principal, I was working hard to find new ways to engage families when we couldn't be together physically. We all missed seeing actual in-the-flesh humans walk through our school gates and classroom doors every day, but in that moment, we had to settle for 2D connection through computer screens.

And then March Madness was cancelled. The NCAA’s annual basketball tournament that spawns bracket predictions and office pools wasn’t going to happen. Though I’m not what you would consider to be the most rabid March Madness fan, it seemed that yet another piece of normalcy had been taken away...at a time when we were all desperately trying to keep things as normal as possible.

​But then I had an idea. Why not bring some of the excitement of March Madness to my school community in a virtual format? Not in a basketball sense, but around a topic to which we can all relate -- snacks. What if I took a bunch of snack foods, organized them into brackets, and let our school community vote on which was their favorite? Maybe that could be fun. Maybe that could provide a little distraction from all the negativity that was dominating the news at that time. And so, March Madness: Snacks Edition was born.

I took 64 popular snacks and organized them into four brackets: Chips, Cookies, Crackers, and Gummy Candies. I then created and sent out a ballot (Google Form) asking students, staff, and families to vote for their favorites in a collection of first-round match-ups. After a couple days, I tabulated the results, the winning snacks moved on, and I sent out a second-round ballot. This process continued until we had a champion.

Did folks enjoy it? Absolutely. It was fun. It was cool to receive messages from people rejoicing when their favorites moved on...or incredulously wondering how one of their picks could have possibly been defeated -- "I can't believe <snack 1> beat <snack 2>!" A few skeptics even asked for receipts, which I gladly produced to prove there wasn't any rigging going on.

Did the activity raise test scores? Probably not. But remember, that wasn't the goal. The goal was to add a little something extra, some fun. The goal was to brighten our days, days that had become increasingly gloomy under the cloud of the lockdown. I firmly believe this virtual activity helped move the needle in terms of building positive culture in our school, even when the physical campus had been temporarily shuttered. It was actually such a success that it has since spawned two sibling competitions -- March Madness: Cereal Edition and March Madness: Disney-Pixar Edition. And the fun doesn't have to be relegated to just the school site. After moving to my position at the district office, I brought March Madness with me where we've since gotten to find out our district administration's favorites. In case you're wondering, the Murrieta Valley district support center staff crowned Red Vines, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Toy Story as its champions.

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​If this sounds like something you'd like to try in your own school or district, I've got you covered! I've compiled everything you'll need to recreate any or all of the three competitions. Simply head to bit.ly/marchmadnesstemplates where you'll find:

• 64-competitor Bracket templates for all three contests (in both Sheets and Excel format)
• Google Form ballot templates for all three contests
• March Madness images for all three contests (in both .png and Canva format)

Let the madness begin...in a good way!