About your teacher;
Everyone else is basically saying what I wanted to say. I started role playing before I started writing, and was in fact comended on most of the essays I turned in to my teachers in highschool. Even now, through college, my teacher was excited to read any of my essays I handed in to her.

I thank the fact I started role playing when I was 13 years old, and did nothing but until I was 19 years old. It was just recently I started doing it again.
Along with reading and writing (and role playing) my grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, word comprehension, etc. were drastically changed in the best of ways.
I haven't roleplayed in two years, and well, i'm not as good as I was before.

Sadly enough.
Either way, you're teacher is a loon, and can't tell you what you can and can't do in your private time. She's not your mother or your father and has no right.
RANT: No one replies to this african role play in two or three weeks, and finally someone posts? Ugh, that thing is dead. Just let a dead thread stay dead.