Brian Lehrer: Abbott Elementary, the ABC mockumentary, and workplace sitcom premiered in December and it just wrapped up its first season. Set in a Philadelphia public school, Abbott Elementary, the show follows a group of devoted teachers navigating the alarming lack of resources at the school's disposal. Some teachers have praised the show for getting it. Real teachers have praised the fictional show for getting it.

Representing their experiences in and around the classroom with empathy and humor, making them feel seen, creator and lead Quinta Brunson named the show after her sixth-grade teacher who she said made her feel seen. My next guest writes, Abbott Elementary is a love letter to a profession that chronically never gets its flowers and the love has been received.

With me now is Yannise Jean, Assistant Editor at Fast Company, for which she wrote the article ABC's Abbott Elementary is the love letter teachers deserve. Hi, Yannise welcome to WNYC.

Yannise Jean: Hi Brian. Thanks for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: We want to open up the phones right away for teachers and other school staff or anybody else who wants to tell us why you're watching the show. We know you're on Easter and Passover break many of you teachers and other educators. You're around at this time of day to listen. This is largely for you and anyone knows who knows a teacher or knows a student, okay, that's everybody, maybe you'll be interested to eavesdrop on this. Teachers and other educators, 212-433-WNYC.

If you're watching Abbott Elementary, tell us how well does this show get it? What does it get right or wrong about life as an educator, particularly if you work in a school or a community that has been historically neglected and underserved around education? Who on the show do you identify with? What moments resonate with you? Let's talk about Abbott Elementary. If you've been watching, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Yannise, for people who've never seen the show, what's the basic premise? How is it different from the many other teacher shows and movies that have come before?

Yannise Jean: Abbott Elementary centers on a group of teachers centered in Philly. It's really different from other shows just because it really displays the realities of teaching, where it comes from, underfunding, trying to deal with rowdy students, but the best way to deal with them. I think it's really just a great comedy that Quinta has put out into the world that shows that you can talk about the issues without focusing so much on it.

Brian Lehrer: Is Quinta Brunson-- I see that she was raised by a teacher. Her mum taught grade school in Philly and Quinta was in her class. How much of her mum's experience in the classroom is reflected in Abbott Elementary?

Yannise Jean: I think a lot of it is really inspired by just how she approaches teaching. I think in one interview Quinta talks about going on carpools with her mum and just listening in to the conversations with her mum and her co-worker. I think a lot of that is inspired by those conversations along with the sixth grade teacher who also inspired the name of the show.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting some calls coming in and we'll go callers in a minute. In your experience as a viewer and seemingly a real fan of the show, how does it find humor amid the often bleak reality of disinvestment in urban public schools, which I think is an overriding theme?

Yannise Jean: I guess we could really just look at it from the standpoint of infrastructure where lower underfunded schools they don't really have the best buildings. I think in the pilot episode, Gregory who's played by Tyler James Williams, there's a toilet that explodes all over him. It's really funny to us looking at it as viewers, but for some of the teachers that I spoke to in my piece, it's something that they have to deal with every single day, but it's different to view it on a screen and to laugh about it later.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Teachers. who's ever had a toilet explode on you in your school building, [laughs] or any other experience that makes you relate to Abbott Elementary? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Nancy on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi Nancy.

Nancy: Hi. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. How are you?

Nancy: Good. I'm great. As a New York City high school teacher and a standup comedian, I really feel that this is the first show about teaching that gets it right since Welcome Beck, Kotter as far as being truly authentically funny and really dealing with issues that we really go through in the classroom. Now, for example, I'm a high school teacher, but there was an episode about a rug. I truly understand with elementary school teachers, the whole idea behind the rug and the juggling of priorities.

What's more important, holding onto your values or getting a rug which the kids need? It's hilarious because people think it's all just about standing in front of the classroom, but there's a lot of priorities. I think the principal, the character of the principal is fantastic. Not everybody in the school system is there to save the day. They're there to move up the ladder.

The principal, I think her character is flawed and funny, but she's real. As an older teacher, the whole idea of the veteran teacher, whether she's really bitter and old or she really has value because she has experience. Then the new teacher who's coming to save the day. It's wonderful. I love this show. When I was covering a class and it was an education class in my school and I showed the kids, they never saw it and I showed them Abbott and I showed them the television show and they thought it was great.

Brian Lehrer: Stay for a second. Nancy, let me play a one minute scene from the show, because I think it relates to just the thing you are describing here. This is an early scene that establishes the premise in that the teachers at Abbott Elementary are telling the principal, Ava, what their classroom needs.

[video playing]

Speaker: Guys, I need a new rug. Mine is officially done.

Speaker: Me too. I shook mine out and all of the asthma kids had to go to the nurse's office.

Speaker: Mine's busted. You can't class up a rug like you can couch with a nice coat of plastic.

Speaker: Hey y'all. What it do baby boos? What do you all think about this little film crew I brought in here?

Speaker: Distracting makes our jobs harder.

Speaker: But exciting. We are about to be on TV.

Speaker: Because they are covering underfunded, poorly managed public schools in America.

Speaker: No press is bad press, Barb. Look at Mel Gibson, still thriving. [laughs] Daddy's Home 2, hilarious. [laughs]

Speaker: Ava's our principal. She has a unique take on her job.

Speaker: She's bad at her job. What's unique is that she's bad at her job.

Speaker: There you are. Hey, look, can I talk to you? I need an aide. I'm outnumbered in there. The kids are crazy. One of them told me to mind my six this morning. I don't know what that means. I need help.

Speaker: Calm down. They're just kids and besides aides costs money and we don't have that.

Speaker: Right, but I just--

Speaker: Do you want to split your salary with somebody else?"

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to split your salary with somebody else? Nancy, that led right to what you were talking about, about the rug and stuff.

Nancy: That was actually the scene I was talking about was that episode just like, "Hey we need rugs." The principal, she's like, "We're going to be on TV." We need rugs. It's more important sometimes that a school looks good. What's their image to the outside world, as opposed to what's really going on inside the school? That happens all the time, but they make humor out of it. Which I find it's wonderful.

I really love in regards to the principal. She has her good moments too. She has a slap of reality, she's not hiding the fact that she got that position because she knew somebody. That also happens in the school system, how we shift around leadership instead of putting like-- It really touches on some real issues that are going on in the system that's good and that's also bad. I love the show.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, thank you so much. Thank you for calling in. Good luck out there when school resumes and you're back in your high school next week. We were talking about the principal there, of the school in Abbott Elementary, Ava. I think Jeanie and Manhattan is calling in to say she knew a real-life Ava, do I have that right, Jeanie? Hi, you're on WNYC?

Jeanie: Yes. Hi, Brian. Longtime listener and first-time caller, I'm thrilled and incredibly nervous. I love your show as much as I love Abbott Elementary. I am both a product of a New York City public school and I for years taught poetry and creative writing as a teaching artist. I was in a school where there was a teacher that was very similar to Ava, but then there was also a librarian who is very similar to Mrs. Howard. At the end of my residency, we had a poetry reading. There was an anthology of all the kids' work and a presentation where each kid got a chance to read, but this teacher, this Ava-like teacher had also written a poem. She just popped up and wanted to be the first one to read. She read her poem and everybody applauded. It was held in the library. Then she just waltz out of the library and had no interest in hearing any of the kids' poems.

The librarian just was irate and was so devoted to the kids and just was such an anchor in that school. Really, the show just nails it. It just nails it and I'm so grateful.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like you were describing a scene from the office but said in a school so that's something. Jeanie, thank you very much for your call. What are you thinking, Yannise as you hear these first two callers?

Yannise Jean: I think it's just proof that the show has really resonated with teachers and education as a whole has always been overlooked. I think this is really a show that can show that teachers deserve the praise that they've been looking for all these decades.

Brian Lehrer: The Mrs. Howard character referred to there as the competent experienced teacher who has the respect of her colleagues and students, I think would be a fair description. Do you have a favorite actor or character yourself? Is it Ava who's played brilliantly by the actress and comedian Janelle James?

Yannise Jean: I love Ava. I think she's hilarious. I think she can be seen more as an anti-hero of the show. She does bad things but she's not as bad as people perceive her to be, but I also love Barbara because of her, she comes from the old school side of teaching, so she's very wise beyond her years and really can serve as a mentor for Jeanne.

Brian Lehrer: Angelique in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Angelique.

Angelique: Hi, Brian. I'm a long-time listener. I've called in from Oakland because I was teaching in Oakland California for a while and I taught in Brooklyn. One of the things I notice about Abbot Elementary is Jeanne the main character and her friends that are younger have this savior complex that is very common in education and can be really detrimental to students. While I understand wanting to support and uplift students, the idea that you're saving students even if that is essentially what happens, to just go in with that mentality is really detrimental which I think Barbara does a good job of trying to ground her in and being like, "You can't look at it like that. That's not what we're here to do."

Brian Lehrer: The teacher Barbara Howard.

Angelique: I think that's very common in education to get people who come in planning to save kids, and they're really disappointed that that's not what happens in the classroom.

Brian Lehrer: Did you go into teaching at all with that attitude and then evolve out of it or how would you say you point your own self in that work?

Angelique: I think I went into education because I really loved teaching math. I love teaching math. I've worked at all kinds of schools. I worked at Midwood High School and I worked also in California at an Alternate Education School where I was working with kids who were previously incarcerated and pregnant. I've worked with a real giant scope of different students, and every time I never think I'm saving kids, I just think that I just want to be supportive and I want to be there. I want to be an extra big sister or mom that can help.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting. Thanks for your work and thanks for your call. Yannise, we've got about two minutes left. Do you know what I'm wondering? Is it just a coincidence that this show, this love letter to teachers as you describe arrives at a time when the rhetoric particularly from the right has struck a real nasty tone when it comes to teachers whether pandemic related or culture war driven?

Yannise Jean: Oh yes, definitely. Especially what we've seen with the pandemic where parents were really pushing for students to go back to in-person early on and teachers were saying, "No this isn't the right way. It's not safe for not only the students but for us as teachers as well." I think a lot of people view teachers as babysitters. They don't really consider that teachers are there to teach, that it's not an easy job to really perform.

Brian Lehrer: Off-screen, have the creators or the network been able to leverage the show's popularity to benefit real-life schools like Abbott Elementary, or is that a goal beyond producers of a TV show?

Yannise Jean: No, I think Quinta and ABC have been really good about providing funding to these underfunded schools, donating books. I think Quinta even mentioned that she donated a good portion of the marketing budget to schools who needed the money, to teachers all over the country, and ABC has actually partnered with Scholastic to help provide free books to book fairs.

Brian Lehrer: That's great and you did that so efficiently. We have time to sneak in one more call. Jeff in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. We have 30 seconds for you.

Jeff: Hey I'll keep this quick. What I love about this show is that-- I've worked in many schools in New York City over the past 10 years and I feel like it takes the best and the worst of every school that I've worked in and puts them all together in one little amalgamation for us to enjoy: incompetent principals, the young savior teachers, the senior experienced teacher who brings you down, but grows on you. That's what I love about this show. It brings the best and the worst altogether.

Brian Lehrer: Jeff, thank you very much for your call. Good luck out there. There we leave it with Yannise Jean, Assistant Editor at Fast Company where you can find her article ABC’s Abbott Elementary is the love letter teachers deserve. Thanks for sharing it with us, Yannise. Thanks a lot.

Yannise Jean: Thank you.

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