Abbott Elementary, Season 1 episodes 5-9

I am currently watching this really great show called Abbott Elementary. It is really good, and I can see why it won so many awards at this year’s award shows. It was created by Quinta Brunson and it also stars Quinta Brunson as Janine, an elementary school teacher working with other teachers at a Philadelphia public school. It’s also really cool because Lisa Ann Walter is one of the teachers in the show, and she was in one of my favorite movies as a kid called The Parent Trap. At first I didn’t recognize it was her but then I read the credits and I was like, Oh my gosh, she was in The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan!

So in the last episode I watched, episode 9, Janine leads a step team but enlists Ava to join. If you haven’t seen the show, Ava is a hoot. She is always getting into shenanigans and is always hitting on one of the teachers, Gregory. She makes fun of Janine’s optimism and in the first episode she spent most of the school funding on a new billboard with her image imprinted on it. Janine thinks Ava is going to follow her routine and that she and Ava are going to perfectly get along, but one day during step class practice Ava comes in with burritos and a slushy, disrupting Janine from teaching the students. Instead of rehearsing the routine, the students sit with Ava and eat their food and gossip. When Janine was teaching the class and trying to be engaging, none of the students were engaged and none of them talked. Janine thought her routine was perfectly coordinated, but Ava thinks it’s boring and instead has the girls dance to a new routine to the song “Up” by Cardi B. Janine thinks that Ava’s routine isn’t traditional dance and gets upset. Meanwhile, the other teachers (Melissa, Jacob, and Barbara are bonding over their love of Philadelphia’s pizza over lunch) and when they ask Gregory about his favorite pizza, he doesn’t know what to say because he actually doesn’t like pizza. But to fit in with the group, he says that his hometown of Baltimore, has a distinct kind of pizza that is wet. Jacob actually goes out of his way to get Gregory the pizza he wants (seeing the soggy wet pizza grossed me out. Before I became vegan I was a Chicago deep-dish pizza kind of gal, and to this day even though I cannot eat it I still have fond memories.) but then Gregory admits that he doesn’t like pizza and everyone thinks he is out of his mind for not liking pizza. Gregory spends the rest of lunch alone in his car eating his boiled chicken sandwich, and the other teachers tell him that they were just joking and that it’s not a big deal that he doesn’t like pizza. On the day that the step team performs, Ava leaves the auditorium and Janine can’t find her, but then Ava tells her that she had a family emergency and her grandmother had an episode so she had to check in with her. Earlier, Janine was angry with Ava for leaving without telling her but then she apologizes for being angry with Ava and they agree to go with Ava’s routine. The show ends up being a success and while Ava and Janine don’t become best friends after this, it was really cool when at the end of the episode, Ava sees Janine step-dancing alone in the classroom and challenges her to a step dance-off.

Another episode I watched was one where Barbara and Jacob start a garden out in the school parking lot because they are dissatisfied with the quality of the school cafeteria food. They ask the cafeteria workers if they can improve the quality of the food, but the workers refuse and tell them they are doing the best with the resources that the school gave them. Barbara and Jacob bond over gardening and try to persuade Gregory to come garden with them, but he politely declines. He admits to the viewer (this show is in the style of a mockumentary) that he has not had a good history of gardening because his dad made him do intense yard work for most of his life and it wasn’t fun. When a little zucchini finally sprouts in the garden, Barbara and Jacob are overjoyed but then they show the cafeteria worker and the employee seems overjoyed but instead he throws the little zucchini in the trash and says he can’t feed all these children at the school with a little zucchini. Barbara soon regrets Jacob’s idealistic idea of starting this garden but then Jacob comes in the next day and shows Barbara sliced zucchini that he grilled and marinated by himself the night before, and so they excitedly show the cafeteria worker the aluminum pans of sliced zucchini that Jacob prepared, but then the cafeteria worker tells them that it’s a health code violation to use food that people made at home and not in the school cafeteria, and throws it in the trash right before Jacob and Barbara’s eyes. The cafeteria worker has Barbara try one of the chicken nuggets he made for the school cafeteria meals, and Barbara ends up not liking it but pretends like she does because she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Another great part in that episode with the gardening is when Janine’s best friend from college, Sahar, is hired as a new volunteer art teacher at the school. At first Janine is super excited because her and Sahar did a lot of fun things together in college: they went to parties, hung out, everything that best friends do. But everything goes South when Melissa buys several copies of Peter Rabbit for the kids to read because this is their tradition every school year, and also it is the tradition to make paper plate bunnies, but Sahar thinks that is boring and moreover that Peter Rabbit is a tale about capitalism and she wants to have an installation that goes against the grain and breaks with tradition. Melissa is not having it, however, and tells Janine to not let Sahar do the installation. Janine reminds Sahar that they had to ask Melissa’s permission first before doing the installation but Sahar insists that her idea is better than Melissa’s and does the installation anyway. At first it seems perfectly innocent and it seems that Sahar listened to Melissa after all; the kids all made paper plate bunnies and Sahar created a fairy tale installation that looks beautiful. But when Melissa looks closer, she finds that Sahar tore apart the books and made the installation out of the pages of the books and she is, rightfully, furious because she bought those books with her own money. Melissa confronts Sahar and Janine tries to break the two of them up, and Janine confronts Sahar and tells her that what she did wasn’t okay, but Sahar gets defensive and accuses Janine of conforming with the school’s tradition. She quits the job and leaves the school. Janine feels guilty that she didn’t stop Sahar from doing what she did and apologizes to Melissa but Melissa forgives her and Janine repays her by buying new copies of the Peter Rabbit books for the kids with her own money.

Another episode is when Melissa has a student in her class transfer to Janine’s class. The student is named Courtney, and Janine thinks she can handle Courtney since on the surface Courtney seems sweet and innocent but then she finds out that Courtney loves giving the teachers a hard time. Ava lets Janine see Courtney’s records and finds that even Melissa, who is a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense teacher, wrote that Courtney was out of control and even wrote in the evaluation of Courtney that Courtney could have been a cult leader. In the class, Courtney pretends to be polite and nice, but then when the kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance they end up reciting a different version where “God” and the “America” in the United States of America are replaced with Courtney’s name. Courtney gets into other shenanigans like putting a mean note on the back of one of the students and, in what is the final straw for Janine, writes a swear word on the board in permanent marker for the students to read. Janine tells Melissa that she is really stressed out over trying to get Courtney to behave, and even though Melissa makes fun of Janine at first for not being able to handle Courtney, she gives Janine grace and lets her know that Courtney was difficult to handle even for her. At the beginning, Janine gets a C in a performance review she read online about her teaching and reads that the person writing the review thought Janine was inexperienced, and Melissa makes fun of her for it, so Janine tries to prove to Melissa that she didn’t deserve to get that C grade and that she is a better teacher than people think. But later she realizes that she is never going to be a perfect teacher, and Melissa reminds her that everyone is just doing their best at the school and that Janine can’t let one bad review affect her self-esteem.

I can kind of relate to this because even though I am no longer a teacher, I remember when I worked with preschoolers and when I first got there I lacked prior teaching experience (other than being a reading tutor for a month during high school to two boys from Korea) and it was really challenging. At first I got along well with the students but then I stopped going to work as much because every time I encountered a challenge I started to think I wasn’t a capable teacher. That same year I was also adjusting to the demands of college, burnout, and depression. I started calling out sick from work under the excuse that I had to study for my classes. What was really going on though, looking back, was that I didn’t feel like a capable teacher. When students fought with each other I felt I had no control over the situation. When students would act out, I felt I couldn’t do anything about it, so the more experienced teachers had to step in and handle the situation. While that was in the past of course, looking back this situation taught me that every workplace has its challenges and I cannot expect every day to be sunshine and rainbows. I also realized that confidence is something you build with experience. It’s not something you gain overnight. I am sure that I could have learned from the mistakes I made on the job and treated them as valuable lessons, but I think because I was so focused on wanting to be the perfect teacher I got really hard on myself whenever I made mistakes at work or didn’t meet my expectations.

Another episode I watched was about the gifted program that the teachers start at the school. This one really resonated with me because when I went to a new elementary school there was a gifted and talented program and I felt really bad that I didn’t get into the program and felt like I wasn’t smart compared to the gifted and talented students. This really had an impact on my self-esteem and of course, I am at a better place where I am working on not defining my worth by my achievements but looking back I still can’t believe I let not being in the gifted and talented program bring down my confidence. In this episode, a really smart kid transfers from another school to Abbott Elementary and Ava is praising his giftedness and constantly talking about how smart the kid is. Janine decides to start a gifted program and Jacob, who was in the gifted program when he was younger, decides to lead it, too. At first things are going well; Jacob brings a chicken to school to show the kids who got admitted to the gifted program how chickens hatch eggs. However, the students who aren’t in the gifted program feel left out, and Janine tries to remedy the situation by bringing the ones not in the gifted and talented program a display where they think there is a chicken hatching eggs inside the container. However, Janine and the students find out that what hatched from the eggs were snakes and everyone panics. Melissa admits to the camera that when she was picking up the chickens she called the person who supplied snakes instead of chickens. Janine thinks that it was a disaster and tries to clean up the situation, but Gregory suggests that they get rid of the gifted program because it made some the students feel left out. He explains from his own personal experience that when he was in school they had a gifted program but he didn’t get admitted into the program and it made him feel left out and made him feel that he wasn’t as smart as the gifted kids. He reminds Janine that everyone if gifted in some way, not just a few kids. Meanwhile, Barbara and Melissa are in the teacher’s lounge and the guy who restocks the vending machine asks Melissa out on a date. Melissa is still not over her divorce, though, and she politely declines and says she is busy. Even when she tells Barbara that she’s not ready, Melissa still thinks about the vending machine owner and how cute he is, and after talking with Barbara, she regains the confidence to take up the guy’s offer on taking her out on a date.