Technically, not terrible
Chapter 1: Cheerilee
It was out of respect for her students that Cheerilee didn’t start drinking until after she’d graded all their homework, despite the temptation.
College hadn’t really prepared her for the reality of teaching. Her first student teacher position had been gentle, in hindsight, and from there it had progressed into an inexplicable downward spiral.
It wasn’t that her students were stupid, far from it. Many of them were smart and creative and just plain awful at the basics. She did her best to help them focus on what they were good at—as long as it was productive, of course; encouraging Diamond Tiara at her bullying was not useful for society, despite her talent. It was that every year they seemed less skilled at mouthwriting or hornwriting or composing a complete sentence.
There surely was a cause of it, but she had no idea what it was. She couldn’t blame a previous teacher, since there were none to blame. Parents, maybe. Some big cities had a problem with teachers serving in lieu of actual parents, and that could be trickling down to Ponyville.
Or maybe she was just getting more cynical as the years passed. That was certainly a possibility.
She sighed, and picked the next essay up off the pile, her eye twitching at the scrawling writing. Scootaloo’s work, without a question, and it was long. Scootaloo had a tendency to forget to put in vowels when she was writing in a hurry, and she also often skipped bumps in letters that had bumps, saving time by replacing them with a straight line.
If I ever decide to change careers, I’ll work in a pharmacy
Cheerilee squinted down at the essay, unconsciously wondering how soon Rainbow Dash would be mentioned, despite the weathermare’s lack of relevance in an essay about the Equestrian economy.
To her surprise, it wasn’t until page two.
And to her further surprise, the essay was largely on point, so long as she ignored every mention of how awesome Rainbow was. Scootaloo had a tenuous grasp of how weather affected everypony and therefore influenced Equestria’s economy, although her understanding of how many ponies actually made it work was far more tenuous.
Cheerilee shrugged. Despite the poor penmareship and the blatant idolization, it wasn’t technically terrible. She scrawled a B+ across the top and moved to the next essay in the pile.