Sounds like you aren't looking for specific advice but for general tools so that you can take your education into your own hands. This is a very good thing, because the best programmers have a passion to do so and spend a lot of time outside of class to learn their craft. My first language was technically Visual Basic, but I didn't like it at the time so I used QuickBasic instead (I wouldn't recommend that for you, as times have changed since then). As it was a beginner course in high school, my teacher seemed perfectly OK with this (guess my teacher was a little nicer than yours). That all being said, I'd suggest you hone your Googling skills. A good starting point would be to search for "Visual Basic tutorial". This seems like a good starting point:
http://cuinl.tripod.com/tutorials.htm
The first tutorial says:
"This Tutorial is for completely beginners with Visual Basic. It will teach you right from the very start, how to make your first program in Visual Basic."
That sounds like what you want. Also, I'm not sure which version of Visual Basic you're working with, but I suggest you download the latest and greatest to work with it. You can download the (free) Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vb/Default.aspx