I love Abbott Elementary. It is one of my favorite shows, and I was so excited that season 3 is finally here! I missed the first two episodes, so I need to catch up, but I definitely did not want to miss it. In this episode, Janine and Jacob are trying to find an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for a student who needs an interpreter, but Janine has to go through several hoops in order to get the interpreter. She has to go through several chains of command, and she has high hopes that she will just get it approved immediately, but that isn’t how it works. Instead, her proposal gets rejected and after going through several people for the approval, she almost gives up. But Ava and Janine’s fellow teachers encourage her to keep going. Meanwhile, a group of Gregory’s students start to come into his classroom and hang out there frequently, even though Gregory wants to spend his free time alone. They come in with issues about their personal lives, and try to ask how they can get girls, and one student passes gas. This causes Gregory a lot of stress because he just wants to spend time alone. I was kind of squealing with joy because there is one moment where the students come in, and Gregory is reading the book Quiet by Susan Cain. If you haven’t read Quiet, I recommend it. As an introvert, I really loved it because it reminded me that there are also a lot of people like me who are introverted and that there is nothing wrong with wanting to recharge in solitude sometimes. Susan Cain talks about how introverts can make valuable leaders and shares her own experiences about moving through the world as an introvert. I remember reading it in high school and feeling, Wow, I am not alone. I feel seen and heard. I feel like Quiet was the perfect book for Gregory because I learned from this episode that he is someone who values his alone time. Gregory finally manages to set some boundaries with the students, and he tells them that they can’t come in his room talking with him about girls, and one of the students asks if he can still pass gas, and Gregory lets him. He has to set this boundary because one of the students asks him for advice about this girl he is dating because he wants to buy her a chain, and Gregory tells him to focus on school and then he and the other guys can focus on girls later. However, the student takes his advice too far and he ends up breaking up with his girlfriend, causing her to break down in tears and causing Melissa to ask Gregory what on Earth he did to make the young woman cry. Gregory realizes that the student took it too literally, and so he has to establish boundaries so that the kids aren’t coming in trying to get him to always give advice about their relationship problems. Mr. Johnson, the custodian, comes into Gregory’s classroom when he is trying to have some alone time, and Gregory tells him he is reluctant that his students think he is the “cool teacher.” Mr. Johnson busts up laughing because he thinks Gregory is anything but the “cool teacher,” and Melissa comes in trying to get a break, and Gregory admits that he is being called “the cool teacher,” and like Mr. Johnson, Melissa laughs because she can’t believe Gregory would be called “the cool teacher.”
Tariq, Janine’s ex-boyfriend, comes back into the picture because there is a student at Abbott named Nick, and Nick’s mom is dating Tariq. Earlier in seasons 1 and 2, Tariq was Janine’s boyfriend, and they had a very codependent relationship in which Janine took responsibility for his mistakes and his mess, and he depended on her to always take care of him. (This reminds me of myself, because I tend to be dependent a little too much on others and get comfortable with depending on them, when I can just do the thing myself. But that’s for another blog post.) Janine breaks up with him because he is just a really not-great boyfriend, and she is moving on with her life and moving up in her career. But when he comes back in this episode, it is not a pleasant experience for Janine, especially when he rubs it in her face that he has a new girlfriend. Tariq learns to respect his girlfriend’s son by calling him the name he prefers. Barbara, who is a no-nonsense teacher and has taught at Abbott for many years, advises him to not call Nick “Tariq, Jr.” or “T.J.” because Nick hates it, and because Nick is his real name. Tariq decides to do better (a little bit better, anyway) and call Nick by his preferred name.
Honestly, I cannot wait to watch the next episode of Abbott Elementary.
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