Teaching style

I was told by at least 10 of my students that attended college fly-ins this past year that I was their only teacher that taught them like a college professor.  That was probably the highest complement I could have gotten at the time.  I teach high school seniors AP Environmental Science, my schools first AP science class.  While I totally believe that a rigid class setup, where every minute is planned out (ex. 1-4 min = DO NOW, 5-7 min = the hook, 8-18 minutes = intro to new material, etc.) has its place in high school, I don't feel that it's the best learning environment for seniors.  They are not going to get that rigid structure in college so I tried my best to set up my class structure as a prof would.  I focused on note taking, discussion, and study skills rather than setting up the class to run like clockwork.  If a discussion took off and I was getting great participation then I went with it, instead of cutting them off saying, "well we have 23 minutes left in class, its time for independent practice" like a lot of their teachers did.  I just tried to give my kids what I wish I would have gotten as a senior, knowledge of how college was really going to be and not just blindly following the schools lesson plan structure.  What works for an 8th grader is not going to work for a senior, administrators need to understand this.