I'm acting as fast as I can.

A lot of teaching is acting: acting like Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote one of the most interesting novels...ever; acting like misbehaving students don't annoy you; acting like all the turned-in-late work is FINE , no it's GREAT because you finished something. And I wasn't going to eat lunch today, anyway, so come on in and we'll check over that research paper.

When in reality, you know that The Scarlet Letter is way too advanced for some of these kids, and they are Sparknoting it; that those misbehaving students need a week in military academy and their parents will let them off the hook; that the late work will prevent you from having any kind of life this weekend.

But so: find the Seven Deadly Sins in The Scarlet Letter. You there, with your phone out- you are on Special Teams this week ( moving textbooks from one shelf to another.) And what is this? Fan mail from some flounder? Why, it's that essay that was due two weeks ago!(Student beams.) Why, quarter credit is still better than none!  And lunch- unless it includes martinis- is overrated.

To be or not to be a teacher. It comes with the territory. Shove that bundle of frustration  down into your  teacher suitcase- the one you take home every night- and sit on the lid, and you'll get the latches fastened eventually. And then,you can act like everything is Fine. It Will Be OK. Again.

What I'm finding harder and harder to deal with are the things that I can't fit in that suitcase of It's OK: the controlling parent who keeps going higher and higher up the administration so that her child won't have to revise something. Kids who are falling apart because of bullying. Kids who are seniors in high school and can't read. The tragedy of  house, fire, family.

I'm at a loss, because every year, something bad happens. We dealt with Death last year by writing poems, illustrating them,  talking about the stages of grief. This year, the feeling is  that if you step one toe out of the curriculum, the whole thing will come tumbling down like a house of cards on top of you. The classes are too big, the kids too unmotivated,the schedules too crowded, the higher-ups too unsympathetic, the teachers too shell-shocked to be inspired. The stakes- keeping your job - has everyone walking the razor's edge.

If we don't stop pretending that everything is ok after one of these big tragic events, we will teach our children to become numb. I wish we could address some of the fundamental things like -hey- you are a person and we should treat you nicely, even when you aren't at your best- before business as usual. Because the tendency is to numb yourself with consumption:  buy more cell phones, buy more clothes, get some Uggs or an iPad or a new car for yourself or your kid.  Distract yourself from the pain of loss, look at the shiny thing instead. Create drama to hide the pain of loss.

I wish we could put stickers on student transcripts: Student lived through life- tsunami. Student lived through bullying. Student lived through parent layoff. Student lived through major depression. Student's sister died of cancer. Student's best friend died. Put some of the tenacity that's required to get out of bed in the morning when you're faced with all this crap and you're in high school.

And put some stickers on the teacher evaluations, while we're at it: Helped student who was failing. Talked about grief and death. Let kids cry after class. Cried with them. Listened to someone's story. Made them laugh at the end of the week. Brought food.  But we can't measure those on tests, now can we?

You read Whitman and Ginsberg and realize they were both Howling. Eliot and Rilke both wandered those lamplit rainy streets, Robert Frost behind them taking notes.Dickinson and Woolfe both wrote letters  to the world and never heard back. Everything's been said and done and there's nothing new under the clouds. There's a big gear turning round and round, and eventually it's your turn to get the bad part, broken spokes, rusty cogs A text that says, "He's gone," calls that says No, I won't be home for the holidays, sorry Mom. The dirty, greasy part of life.  But you are an adult; you've lived through this so many times, you know eventually it will get better. And so you wait. And you act like everything is fine, and you try to help those kids make some sense of of the senseless.

Here's a poem, dear Imaginary Reader. Because you're kind enough to have read my rant.

Those visits home, the way the young

Those visits home, the way the young
come back and still follow you around
or find you on the bed reading
or writing, to lie down at an angle or

sit cross-legged. No secret between you,
not even trouble quite though
it isn't ordinary, the way the world unravels
through them: what he said, what she

never, who traveled where, that things—
how exactly—splinter and break
and cut. It trails off then. Both of you,
which one to speak but thinking

better of it. And the book is just a prop,
what you were writing perfectly weightless
in this silence. Child, oh fully no longer,
out there tangling, untangling.

MARIANNE BORUCH