Abbott Elementary – Teacher Appreciation

By starrymag | March 15, 2023

By: Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

 

 

We start the episode with a roast and the subject is neither Janine (Quinta Brunson) nor Jacob (Chris Perfetti) for a change. Enter Gregory (Tyler James Williams) who waltzes into the teacher’s lounge with a new hat, to get an image it’s the kind that mounties would typically wear. Gregory says he just wants to try something new, but Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Melisssa (Lisa Ann Walter) and Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) tell him the hat is hideous. Actually, Melissa tells him he looks like he robbed an Al Capone museum. When Ava (Janelle James) walks in she wonders if he’s been riffling through Bruno Mars’ closet. Even Janine wonders if he ripped the hat out of an Indiana Jones movie about bad hats. Sufficiently roasted, Gregory tosses the hat into the trash and Mr. Johnson fishes it out saying it belongs on his head. The consensus was that Mr. Johnson can make the hat work.

 

On an unrelated note, it’s Teacher Appreciation Week and the teachers don’t appreciate it, although not for the reasons you might think. They find the gifts they get from their students and their parents very endearing. However, it’s not lost on them that the week was invented to pacify them and distract them from the fact that the district will do anything but give them more resources. They won’t make working conditions better for them and the kids, but they also don’t want them quitting. Happy Teacher Appreciatin Week! But Ava comes baring good news. At first everyone is pretty underwhelmed, but then Ava says that as a part of Teacher Appreciation Week she’s got tickets to see the Sixers.

 

Everyone is excited and impressed that Ava has something everyone would want. At first the assumption is that the entire staff has tickets to see the basketball game, but the hope is short-lived. Ava says she’s only got two tickets as, of course, the district would never be that generous. She apologizes for burying the lead, but she wanted to see some energy.

 

Janine says she will be hosting a game night in honor of her sister Ayesha (Ayo Edebiri) visiting. She wants Jacob and Gregory to attend, and she’s really excited to see her sister. Janine tells the cameras that the visit is top secret though because Ayesha doesn’t want to see their mom. Plus, we learn that Gregory is actually a big board game enthusiast as he loves everything except for Settlers of Catan.

 

After Janine makes a movie reference that no one gets Ava pipes in from the speaker system to make an announcement. She says that the staff is going to decide who gets the tickets now, so everyone needs to head to the library. First, Barbara points out that not everyone on staff – namely Gregory – is from Philly so she wonders if everyone’s interested. Gregory said the Sixers are playing against his hometown’s team, so he really wants to go. Then, they move onto to trying to decide how they’re going to determine who gets those tickets. They nix picking a name out of a hat idea because someone who doesn’t want them always gets them. Jacob starts to suggest a vote, but Melissa thinks he’s going to say they should fist fight for the tickets. Of course, the teachers think a vote is the fairest and least bloody way to choose.

 

Ayesha arrives and Janine is very enthusiastic about seeing her. The enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be shared though. Janine had all these plans for them to hang out, but Ayesha made plans elsewhere. Janine tries to not get upset, but she says she figured that since Ayesha was staying with her that she would have toldl her that she made other plans. Ayesha calls her mom and says she’ll check in next time. Janine points out that their mother never cared where they going. Good times.

 

The next day the ticket saga continues. Ava hands out the ballots and Jacob, Janine and Gregory talk about the sister situation. The good news is that Jacob and Gregory are definitely coming. Moving on, the teachers are all lobbying hard to get their peers to vote for them. Jacob and his nemesis Mr. Morton (Jerry Minor) make the case that they should get the tickets because they have to deal with teens who are a tough crowd. Melissa thinks she deserves them because she’s teachers two classes at once. Gregory argues that he deserves them for how much he’s improved. Barbara makes the case that as a kindergarten teacher she’s laying the foundation for her students’ educational future. In the end all the arguing is for naught because in the end Mr. Johnson wins. How, everyone voted for him thinking no one would vote for him and they didn’t want to just vote for themselves. Bummer. And no one else wants to come to Janine’s game night.

 

Speaking of said game night, it’s a little rocky. Only Jacob understands the rules of Settlers of Catan. Jacob, Gregory and Erika (Courtney Taylor) all like Ayesha and think she’s super cool. Janine says that everyone always says that. Then, things take a turn for the serious over Asia. In the game Ayesha is given water and has to choose to stay in Asia or go with her water in hand. If she goes Janine will be stuck in Asia without any water. Ayesha decides to leave and that is a problem for Janine. Once the move is done Janine says it’s not shocking that Ayesha would bail on a place that needs her when the going gets tough. Ayesha explains that she just knows a lost cause when she sees one. Janine thinks that was a selfish move, but Ayesha says she didn’t get a say in being born somewhere without water. Janine notes that she was born there too but stuck around because she was needed. Clearly this isn’t about the game anymore and Janine hammers that home when she tells Ayesha that she abandons people. At that Ayesha storms outside, Janine follows and everyone else just looks uncomfortable.

 

 

Outside the sisters’ argument continues while inside the group tries and mostly fails to not listen. Long story short, Janine thinks Ayesha is a flake. She says it was inconsiderate to treat her like an Airbnb instead of a person she was visiting. Janine feels like it’s a part of a pattern where Ayesha does whatever she wants. She adds that Ayesha bails when things get hard, and Janine has to stay and pick up the pieces. Ayesha says people leave their hometowns all the time. But Janine expresses that she knows how hard dealing with their mother is and she still left her to do it all alone. Janine feels it’s not fair that Ayesha got to go to Colorado and have fun while she’s still dealing with their mother. Yet, Ayesha said it was really hard for her in Philly. Everyone believed in Janine and no one had any expectations for Ayesha. They never spell out exactly what their mom did or didn’t do, but Ayesha says she was never going to be able to get it together around their mother. She does apologize to Janine though. Still Jannie says although she gets her leaving their mother, she still felt abandoned. They then awkwardly go back inside.

 

The next morning things are still a bit tense after the battle royale for the tickets. However, Barbara decides to break the ice. She says the mess with the tickets is a prime example of what happens when the district gives them less of what they need. For example, they were promised projectors in every class and got one projector for the whole school. They’ve learned to share, but here they turned on each other. Thankfully, everyone apologizes for how they behaved.

 

Later that day Ayesha surprises Janine with a visit to her classroom. Janine wasn’t sure her sister even knew where she worked. But Ayesha says she knows how important her job is and she does listen. Shocking to no one at this point Janine says that their mother has never come to Abbott. At any rate, Ayesha and Janine agree that they’re family is complicated and move a projector together. Everything isn’t magically fixed, but it’s a start. Then, one of Barbara’s students surprises her with a Teacher Appreciation Week gift just when she needed it. We close with a monologue of Barbara explaining that after all her years as a teacher sometimes she needs to remind herself why she’s here. The answer: her wonderful students and her dedicated colleagues.

 

What happens next is unfortunately a little less wholesome. We cut to Ava’s office and she receives an important fax. Remember that petition to make Abbott Elementary a charter school? Well, it now has enough signatures to make the case in front of the school board. Ava doesn’t read the date the meeting is scheduled on, but it seems like this is happening sooner rather than later. At the basketball game Mr. Johnson is slated to win a cash prize because he like knows the answer to a trivia question about cleaning supplies.