Peter Principal

High school students spend nearly 200 of 365 days a year in a school. But what is the significance of spending excessive amount of time sitting in a school desk if the teacher’s methods do not facilitate the student’s needs?   I have been passed along from grade to grade, class to class, and teacher to teacher. There are numerous teachers whom I can recall for their unorthodox teaching methods; some utilize these methods but others fail with them.
The Dictator; Room No. 511. Freda Castello scared and haunted all juniors. Castello’s class showed no mercy; we covered the first five chapters of the book in the first four days of school. With the sound of her voice, students would listen in complete silence. She would start class right when the bell rang; if you were not in your seat, then you could listen to the lectures outside through the window in the door. Mrs. Castello knew everything we did even while checking her email or grading papers and would simultaneously be lecturing us as well. (She watched us like she had eyes of a hawk; you couldn’t even get a yawn past her.)   The class consisted of straight lecture; everything that came from her mouth appeared on a test or on a quiz; you had to learn to write faster than she talked. To title a paper correctly, you would have to jump through numerous hoops. We could only use blue ink on white paper, with no markings in the margin, or points headed out the door, and if you could not do that correctly, you might as well walk out the door too.   She had the textbook memorized forwards, backwards, and upside-down and you were expected to do the same. In one day we would cover about one chapter in the book, with about two quizzes and one test every week and a half, which would mean some weeks we would take up to three quizzes.
In Castello’s class the whole point was memorization - everything about everybody, every fact every figure. We committed every detail in the book to memory, at least for a time being. Mrs....