Courage: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger or pain.

That is exactly what this month’s character breakfast recognized students for doing. The monthly character breakfast was held Thursday, April 12, 2012, up on the Shelf in the Commons.

Every month teachers pick students who they feel go above and beyond at showing the character word of the month. April’s character word is courage.

At the breakfast, students that were chosen sat down with friends and ate donuts while Assistant Principal Mandy Lewis and guest speakers shared stories and encouraging words. They also received a certificate for their accomplishment.

Colleen Fields was April’s guest speaker; she spoke with the chosen students about how proud she was of the effort they put through to be full of courage every day of the week.

As well as sharing encouraging words she told the students about two different fictional characters, Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the cowardly lion from “Wizard of Oz.” She described how much courage they put through and the lessons they taught in their stories by showing courage.

However, this character breakfast was a little strange in the way that the attendance was near none. In previous months tables were full of students, but this month only about 10 of the chosen students showed up.

I was one of the students that attended, and it was very strange to see so many open seats. In my opinion, if your teacher went out of the way to nominate you, you might as well show up.

To describe the lack of attendance, Lewis described that since the word was courage the students were picked for very individual reasons and personal stories were probably involved in the picking of students.

Therefore most students were likely embarrassed or afraid to show up.

Even though the reasons for their nomintaion were probably personal, no one else in the room knew why you were there besides Lewis.

In a crowd of people courage can be one of the hardest things to demonstrate, whether it’s not following the norm or doing what you know is right when everyone else believes it is wrong.

Courage takes a person to be brave, and have a mindset of what is right and wrong.

Whether or not the students showed up that were chosen or not, the whole Lafayette staff is very proud and thankful for what they did to show courage.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

That is what true courage is.