Forbidden verbs

My son is in college and taking an English 101 class.  His professor has what are called forbidden verbs.  Which in old school terms would be your linking verbs, is, are, has, had, have...Now I understand that they are not the strongest of verbs and she is trying to get the kids to make their sentence more interesting.  But to ot use a single forbidden verb in a four page compare and contract essay is asking a lot.  She will go through the paper and number the verbs,  each one being a point off the total score.  I have been paying attention to books I'm readng and wonder how it would look if we didn't use these verbs.