In this story, the main character is Roger, who is a boy in 3rd grade. He is very playful, and has a very laid back and lax teacher named Ms. Wilson. Then she leaves, and his class gets a very strict substitute teacher whose name is Ms. Orville. She embarrasses some of the children and their parents in front of everyone else, and she forces the children to do everything perfectly. In my opinion, she is a bad teacher.
I think Ms. Orville is a bad teacher because she is too strict. Even though students need a teacher who isn’t too laid back, they shouldn’t have a teacher who is too strict. She makes them march in a straight line in unison every single day, and assigns a lot more homework than they are used to. Even though it improved Roger’s spelling skills, this only happened because he tried really hard. It didn’t do much for the other kids.
Ms. Orville also yells at the 3rd graders whenever they make any kind of mistake. She expects eight and nine year olds to be completely mature and act like adults. Everyone needs to learn these things eventually, but I think it should be later in life. In 3rd grade, most kids don’t fully understand manners yet, and she is trying to teach little kids these things. I think students should start have strict teachers later in elementary school or in middle school. Or else the younger kids who have strict teachers won’t understand what their teachers are doing for them and hate their teacher.
Another reason I think she is a bad teacher is because I have a bias against strict teachers. I had a very strict teacher in 4th grade, who was similar to Ms. Orville. But she wasn’t as strict and didn’t make us march in a line. Even so, I hated her. The year before, I had a very laid back teacher who didn’t assign much homework. Then in 4th grade suddenly I had a teacher who yelled at us if we messed up at all and assigned a lot of homework. She only had one or two favorite students who liked her, but everyone else hated her.