Life at Abbott Elementary: A Journey from Central Office to the Classroom

The number of fans have gotten text from my friends and my family being like you are living Abbott Elementary is borderline criminal and also hilarious. I haven’t watched all of that elementary. I have watched it. I do watch it, but I’m like halfway through Season 2 and I know in Season 3. But Jenny and leaves Abbott to go work for the district, like work for central office. And that’s exactly what I did. I left my school in North Philly and I went to work at central office. Now, I don’t know if Janine, like me, leaves central office, but I left central office and I went back to the classroom and I just worked at a school, regular old teacher.

I didn’t like become a coach or anything. I just went back to the classroom because respectfully, nobody should be taking teaching advice from me. I am not a qualified coach, but I do know people who do coach other teachers who are still like third, fourth year teachers. Now, did I apply for those coaching positions when I was trying to leave the classroom? Absolutely was I brought down to earth by my Barbara, my personal bar bra when I told him that I applied for coaching positions. Absolute.

That’s in hindsight, how silly now like to write curriculum or coach technology, those are different. I think young people should be the only people coaching technology. I myself have received technology cochings from out of touch. I don’t even know what to call them, who don’t know how to plug in a smart word to a computer, return a word document into PDF, or even know how to use Google Drive correctly. And the people like Barbara really are the best coaches. But the people like Barbara want you to leave them alone and they don’t want to become coaches. They don’t want the pay bump. They don’t want the work. They don’t want to do it. They just want to teach their kids and go home and coach their kids baseball. They don’t wanna be coaches, but they’re the best coaches.

I’m gonna be super curious to see if Janine goes back to the classroom in season. And if she does, sure, somebody will tell me, but no spoilers. I don’t know. I will say there is an abundance of Jacobs. I have met my fair shirt Jacobs. I’ve also met my fair share of elder gregories, but never young Gregory. My own mother is Melissa Schman. That’s my mom. I watch that TV and I’m like, that is my mother up there. Did they observe her for that? She does teach art though. So like slightly different, doesn’t teach classroom self contain content, but right up there, my screen, that’s my mind, my personal favorite episode of Abbott Elementary from last week.

We have bees they call pest control, which I’ve never, eh, I’ve never experienced. In Northfield, I had wasps in my classroom. We couldn’t find the wasps nest anywhere. Like the building engineer could not find the Wasp, says the Wasp should come in. I would call the office. The building engineer would come upstairs with his little shop back vacuum thing and suck the bug off the window and then leave. And then I’d call him like few hours later and he’d come do it again. No one ever called pest control. And even though it was an option, the pest control showed up last week also when I had wasps in my house. He opens my door and he goes, hey, do you have any bees? And I was like, not in here. But she does.

Next door. The 5th grade class is next door to me. We are separated by a fake partition role that is broken, so it’s open in three spots. There’s effectively a door between our classrooms that doesn’t close all the way, a crack in the middle and a crack on the end. So we might as well have combined 4th and 5th grade class cuz you could hear everything that happens between our rooms. And she had bees and I was like, we basically are one giant classroom. That wall is fake. So like she has bees. I’m probably gonna have bees in the coming days. And he was like, yeah, true. As he’s closing that, I was like, can I get your number? And my grade partner looks me and she goes, you’re engaged.

And I was like, I have wasps in my home. He’s here for bees. He must know what to do. I was like, you really thought I was trying to pick up this man at work? And then the building engineer came back with the pest control guy. Later in the day when my kids were in the room, the building engineer looks me, goes, hey. And I was like, hey, you got any bees? I was like, nope, not yet. The music room does, though. And next door she’s got Adam. They turn around, they leave. One of my kids goes, bisty, is he a beekeeper? And another kid, before I can even explain, goes, no dummy, he’s not even wearing the suit beekeepers wear.

And I said, respectfully, friends, that man you see every day, that man works here every day. He’s the building engineer. He’s the one who comes in every day. We see him every day. And they were like, oh, that’s what he does. And then another one of them chirps in the back and he goes, strictly speaking, mischief. You abbreviate building engineer. It’s be. So it spells B. I couldn’t make it up if I try. And they’re obsessed with mice. They love our mice. I think they’re vile, but they love our mice.

Oh, this is another great episode. Wait here. Every month my great partner throws a pizza party for them. If they have more than 150 dopes, your points, they just like get points for doing the right thing. If you have more than hundred fifty points at the end of the month, you get to go to the pizza party. One of our many running bits is that I’m not allowed to go to the pizza party unless they invite me, unless I’m given an invitation.

Vision to the pizza party because I don’t earn dojo points. I don’t even have a way to earn dojo points because I’m not on our class dojo. I give the points, I can’t earn them. So I have to be given an invitation because I did not earn the pizza party. I didn’t have a hundred and fifty point one time they made me a Powerpoint slide. One time one of them made me a Powerpoint presentation of why I should come to Speech Party this month. I was handed an index card. I’ll put it right here. Can you come to the pizza party? Yes. No. Abbott Elementary is a documentary.