Mrs. Parmely, a cruel fifth grade teacher of mine, was the most intimidating teacher I've ever had to be in the classroom with. From the second she walked into the classroom at the beginning of the school day, she had complete control over the room. Her intimidating presence and loud personality struck fear into me that no other teacher had ever done. Her slicked back blonde hair and piercing brown eyes only cleared over you as her tall figure shadowed over the classwork you struggled to do. Her slow and confident walk around the room while us students were working sent a message that she didn’t have to convey with her voice. But, it still didn’t take her long for her to be yelling at a student with her loud and screechy voice for something they did wrong.

While other fifth grade teachers had cool pets in their rooms and prizes to give away for being successful on a test, Mrs. Parmely had none of that. Her strict classroom environment involved dead silence when working and no nonsense policy that if broken left her yelling at you, along with a trip to the principal's office. I remember working on a class assignment on the classroom computers. Mrs. Parmely had instructed us to get to work with no talking or messing around which I thought was pretty harsh. After getting stuck on a problem, I whispered to the classmate next to me, “I’m stuck on this one problem right here, can you help me out?” in which he responded with, “Yeah sure, no problem.” And before you know it, I was face to face with Mrs. Parmely in which she yelled, “I SAID THERE IS NO TALKING IN MY CLASSROOM, YOU BLATANTLY BROKE MY RULES LUKAS. PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE NOW!” With a face full of shock, I responded by saying, “But, but, but I just needed help with my work.” After responding with silence, I slowly made my way to the principal's office. With my tail tucked between my legs and my head down, I made my way to the principal’s office.

Mrs. Parmely’s homework assignments were given out to her class like candy and matched exactly what she was like in the classroom: daunting and unnerving. Every night, my desk would be filled with multiple assignments and packets that were addressed to every subject we had to learn. From English to science to math, and social studies the work seemed to never stop piling up. No matter how much effort or work you put into the class and her assignments, she would never be pleased and would never even present you with a “Good job.” The daunting amount of homework combined with an unpleasant classroom environment made my urge to go to school and learn disappear. The amount of homework and irritable class environment made the class unbearable. To make things worse, Mrs. Parmely made it impossible to talk to your fellow classmates or have any kind of social interactions which made the class over the top terrible.

Mrs. Parmely made my fifth grade experience unbearable and made me truly not want any other student to experience what my other classmates and I had to go through. However, her class actually gave me a great foundation for every school subject that put in me ahead of other kids in upcoming grades. Furthermore, her difficult class and tough homework helped instill a good work ethic that I still have today which has helped me achieve high grades over the years. But in the end, Mrs. Paremly’s extremely tough class made me come to realize that every class is not going to be an ideal or perfect class just as I wanted it. So, I learned that it takes a good work ethic mixed with practice and preparation to truly achieve success in the classroom.