You knew that, of course. Character counts every day of every month, but character counts in a special way as we enter March.
For our friends in the southern hemisphere, March marks the beginning of the autumn season. For those in the northern hemisphere, March brings the spring season. Either way, change is coming, and changes in weather usually make an impact on our actions.
A New Zealand teacher told me, as we watched students on lunch break one windy day, that the Nor’wester wind was causing our students to be more aggressive than usual. I was still relatively new to New Zealand at the time, so he explained that California’s Santa Ana winds, the Rocky Mountains’ Chinook, and the Mistral in southern France are similar. He had studied winds on a limited basis, and believed that negative ions are beneficial, producing harmony; positive ions are detrimental, producing discord. New Zealand’s gusty Nor’wester sweeps positively-charged ions in from the ocean, making people antagonistic.
Whether this is true or not, most of us have observed that weather affects people. It affects feelings, which in turn can affect behavior. So as we consider the coming March weather, we can expect behavioral changes.
There’s an old saying that “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.” This could be reversed for the southern hemisphere: “March comes in like a lamb and out like a lion.” March is a month when we need to be careful that character we have been building in ourselves or in students does not suffer a setback because of weather. We need to protect against excusing a weakness of character because of “ions” that “made me do it.”
Character counts in March, and we must both teach and model a quality of character that is not affected by weather. As I pointed out to my New Zealand colleague, we cannot allow students to be naughty or troublesome because of changes in weather. We must teach them to exercise character at all times, regardless of circumstances and environment.
This lesson can be reinforced for children by a free character lions and character lambs craft I developed for March. A kinesthetic activity that will help students who learn better by touching and using their bodies, these lions and lambs can illustrate a variety of character traits. They can also illustrate the adage above, helping students remember that lion-like or lamb-like weather, our exercise of character must remain stable. It must be consistent.
Character counts in March with a lion-like stance. You might want to challenge students to build character as strong as a lion. You can symbolize courage of convictions with a lion. Courage stands up for what it knows to be right. It opens its mouth and roars back when friends try to make it go against its convictions. Teenagers will learn this by reading the thrilling teen novel, Passport to Courage.
Character counts in March with the stance of a lamb also. You can teach meekness with a lamb as a reminder. How well I remember watching lambs in New Zealand being rounded up to have their tails docked. Those going down the assembly line bleated forlornly, but the ones waiting in pens were meek, knowing only that they had been separated from their mothers.
March may bring milder weather or harsher weather, but character still counts.
That’s the view from my chair. What’s your view?