My DS had three middle school math teachers. All retired or will be retired after DS had them. All were very nice, but extremely strict. We had an incident that for a month or so, DS had to carpool for 3-hour round-trip for swimming 4 days a week. So we requested delayed submission for homework. Math teacher rejected rightaway. I never asked for anything again since. I can understand why they are so authoritarian to kids....according to DS, math class is totally chaotic once the teacher let loose a little bit.