Abbott Elementary Season 5 Recycles Season 2 Plot For Janine's Development

Abbott Elementary season 5 premieres on ABC in October for the 2025 TV season, and the trailer hints at a storyline that will be great for the character development of Janine (Quinta Brunson). Created by Brunson (who also stars in and writes for the show), Abbott Elementary uses the mockumentary format to follow the teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia school.

When the series first began, Janine was one of the least experienced teachers at Abbott, and while she has grown a lot in the series, season 5 could provide a unique opportunity for her to grow that echoes a season 2 storyline.

Abbott Elementary Previously Addressed Overcrowded Classrooms In Season 2

The Abbott Elementary season 5 trailer reveals that Janine will be teaching double the number of students this year. Ava (Janelle James) gleefully makes the announcement as the teachers are preparing to head back into the classroom, noting that having 40 students might “break her.”

This idea of doubling up on the number of students in a single classroom echoes real-world public school overcrowding issues. It also echoes a similar storyline in season 2, in which Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) also had a class that was larger than normal.

In season 2, the school had recently lost a third grade teacher to a competing school. Melissa had to teach both her class of second graders and a class of third graders as a result. While Melissa acted like it would be no big deal for her, she became overwhelmed trying to keep up with the different lessons and the number of students.

Melissa ended up getting a teaching aide for her classroom, but with Abbott Elementary potentially facing more budget issues, Janine might not have that luxury in season 5.

Abbott Elementary Season 5 Should Not “Break” Janine

Credit: Image via Liliane Lathan / ©ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

Ava jokes when speaking to the Abbott Elementary teachers about 40 students being what finally breaks Janine, but the series does not have to go that route.

Janine is someone who is an eternal optimist and has had to learn from setting the bar too high in the past. While she openly tells Ava that the experience will not break her, she also confides in her boyfriend Gregory (Tyler James Williams) that it might.

Janine is aware of how difficult it will be to have 40 seven and eight-year-olds in her class. This is not a situation in which she thinks she can will circumstances to be what she wants. She understands the difficulty of attention being pulled in multiple directions and learning styles all being different.

In the past, Janine has lamented how long it takes to figure out the different learning styles of the kids in her class in preparing for standardized testing, of having a hard time in hybrid classroom situations when it is harder for students to focus, etc.

Janine is well aware, even when she has fewer students, how hard it can be to reach kids. That means the experience of having to teach 40 children in Abbott Elementary season 5 could be used to demonstrate how far she has come as a teacher.

While it will still be funny to see a few overwhelming moments for Janine, she also needs to show her growth.

Because Abbot Elementary’s Janine has come so far in the last four years, it would actually be gratifying for her to find a way to make the larger classroom size work. Janine knows how to make lessons fun for her students and get them to engage with her in games and stories.

She also has a schedule, evident when her substitutes did not follow it while she worked for the district, but her kids relied on it. Janine knows how to get the students into a routine that works for them.

Janine’s situation is also different from Melissa’s. Melissa had to teach two different grade levels, which meant two entirely different lesson plans for different levels of math, reading, spelling, etc. Janine’s students are all in the same grade and learning the same subjects.

Her situation, combined with her previous experiences, means that Janine has grown into a teacher who should not be broken by the events of Abbott Elementary season 5.

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