Godspeed, Jon Kauffman

Sometimes the name comes first and it takes you a moment to recall the eyes, the face, the voice, the whole of the student.  The name comes in the news or online, maybe a colleague tells you. You freeze as your mind searches, retrieves, then marries the name with the memory and finally you claim the student that the tragedy has taken: "He was mine." Your students are always yours.

Jon Kauffman was pure sunshine. Blond hair, clear smiling eyes and round face. He lit up the classroom with a positive, casual, friendly energy that never wavered. He was my student in seventh grade language arts class during the 2007-08 school year,  Room107 at Lake Region Middle School.

The news article said Jon's motorcycle collided with a white sedan on Route 25 in Effingham, New Hampshire on Friday, July 1. The white sedan fled the scene and my student was taken to the hospital where he later died. He was 21. They're still looking for the woman in the white sedan. 

It is hard to connect the vibrancy of the thirteen-year-old boy with death. The typical phrases rise up in my mind and form a chatter: So young. What a loss. Didn't I also have his younger sister? I think he had an older brother. So very sad. Then the anger: He didn't get a chance to live. His life had just begun. Where is the woman in the white sedan? Can't someone find her?

The mind chatter goes on for a day and then begins to quiet. A TV news station posts some photos. Pictures from his Facebook feed start to fill in the years after he left my classroom. There are the high school years, a girlfriend, a selfie in big sunglasses. There's the motorcycle by the lake. There he is with his brother. A truck. A group shot with friends. Same bright smile. I smile back.

I smile back at his picture because I realize he did have his own full life. Though it was shorter than I understand, shorter than I think was fair, it was his life.  It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is friendship, love, and adventure in his photos.

The 185 days that Jon was my student in seventh grade have now taken on a new proportion in the duration of his life.  In the sadness of losing one student, I am grateful for the gift of spending a school year with him and with each of them. In June, when I say goodbye to my seventh graders, I am reminded to understand that it is also godspeed, a blessing for the journey, no matter how long their road ahead may be.