My math/geometry teacher in tenth grade was a harridan and very strict and scary. If you didn't do your homework it was x points off the first time, x squared the second and x cubed the third, etc. and she'd flunk you that way, no excuses. I remember I was out sick a couple days and it was impossible to catch up because we were in a special National study so the way we were being taught and what we were being taught wasn't something my father could help me with (not my father's plane geometry :-) I ended up with a D in the course and had to retake geometry in summer school in another state so it wouldn't affect getting into college.

She got what was coming to her one day; a guy in my class' father was killed (Vietnam) and he came to school anyway but hadn't done his homework and she was raking him over the coals, she didn't know his father had just been killed but we did and for some reason he left a bit early and someone told her and she started giving us a hard time for not telling her, etc.