Recalling from D’s experience from more than couple of years ago, she had this teacher in AP Physics C in senior year.
Supposedly one of the toughest classes in their school, he wouldn’t teach much, expecting the students to do most of the learning themselves instead with his role being just a guide. But he wouldn’t compromise on grading though. At the end of first half of the course D had a B in the subject - which she managed to pull up to A- overall by the end of the year - that may or not have hurt her chances while applying to ultra competitive traditional undergrads at Stanford, Yale and such.
But interesting thing about the teacher was that he used to talk in the class about a wide variety of topics (since he didn’t spend much time teaching physics anyway). He used to talk at general level about philosophy (his favorite theme), psychology, politics, religion, ethics, economics and such depending on his moods and temperament on a given day. I think that helped D broaden her horizons and gave some talking points for interviews and connect with the interviewers in a decent range of topics and matters.
