Welcome to Sunday Morning Hot Tea where I write about a little something up top then answer a legal question for you down below. This week, lessons from Abbott Elementary, and that’s it.
In this edition:
Topic of the Week – The Pressure of Labels
Legal Question – Nada
The Gifts We All Give
This week, Paris and I caught up on the new TV series Abbott Elementary. If you’re not watching that show, you may be the only one. The runaway hit has been compared to Modern Family and has grown almost as fast. I’ve laughed out loud while watching and teared up at times, too. It follows new and veteran teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public school. I won’t give anything away, but one story arc involves a program for gifted students.
The efficacy and equity of these programs have been debated by education experts and scholars. I am neither an education expert nor a scholar, so I’ve got nothing to contribute to that debate. What I can contribute is my experience in these programs and how I related to Miss Teagues, the protagonist on Abbott, a former “gifted kid.”
They chuck these labels on you early. In kindergarten, my tall, lanky redheaded teacher, Miss Lacey, pulled my mom aside. She said that while my math scores left something to be desired, my verbal scores were high enough to suggest “gifted” classes. That put me into the first and second grade ABLE classes, the designated “gifted” classes at my elementary school. That acronym was the first in a series of several that would define my education.
I have no clue what we did differently than other first and second graders. I remember a girl peed her pants in first grade, leaving a warm puddle in the curve of the blue plastic chair. In second grade, a boy pooped himself, forcing him to waddle out of the classroom wearing a full pair of steaming sweatpants. Why was there so much defecation and urination in these classes? If we were the “gifted” kids, why couldn’t we find the bathrooms on time?
By third grade, the not-quite-ABLE-to-use-a-toilet kids were mixed in with everyone else. Instead, on Wednesdays, a bus would get us and take us to the QUEST Program. I have no idea if this was an acronym or not, but I wouldn’t put it past them. We rode around to other schools, picking up other gifted kids, and were dropped off at Rugel Elementary on the other side of town from me.
I looked it up, and my old school district still does all these programs, including QUEST. That one promises to train students “in critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making.” Let me tell you some fun things that happened on the bus to QUEST. A girl threw my New York Yankees hat out the window over a highway overpass. I have still never replaced it. I poked another girl in the eye using a bit from Three Stooges. We stomped our feet on the floor of the bus in unison until the bus shuddered to a stop. We were convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that our foot stomping caused the bus to break down. In reality, it was probably just an old bus. We didn’t care the real cause. All we cared was that we got to miss class and joke around with each other while we sat at a stop sign waiting for backup.
Each year of QUEST, from third through sixth grade, was themed. One year, our theme was “decades” while another it was “mysteries” then “animals.” Killer themes, really. At the end of each year, we had a capstone project we were required to complete in line with the theme.
For the decades year, we had to come up with an invention. Mine was a Beatles trivia board game because I was obsessed with the Beatles at the time. For the mysteries year, my mom helped me carve a scale model of the Titanic from floral foam because I was obsessed with the movie Titanic and Leonardo DiCaprio. For the animals year, I didn’t even make anything. My mom had made a plush humpback whale for my sister’s science project years earlier. I dusted that baby off, took it in, and passed with flying colors.
Once we were in middle school, we no longer got bussed off to QUEST. Instead, they segregated the school’s “teams” into the gifted kids, who they called “The Trailblazers,” and the others. The Trailblazers were in the AT classes - the acronyms keep coming, buckle up. Not sure what AT stood for - maybe Advanced and Talented? As for the other teams, I can’t recall what they were called. It was probably something like the Yeah Y’all Are Heres.
It’s hard being labeled at all, but I imagine being labeled as “aiiiight” has got to do something to a kid’s psyche. Even if you don’t overtly label them “average” or “regular,” kids understand how the inverse of concepts work. If you point to one group and say, “They are gifted and talented,” the kids on the other side of the hand can finish the sentence for themselves. At least give them that much credit.
At the end of eighth grade, the middle school students were invited to apply for the Renaissance English classes in high school. This was also known as GT - gifted and talented. I did this, with the encouragement of my middle school teacher, Mrs. Shurtleff. Seemed like a lot of work. Didn’t want to do a project to apply. Didn’t want to get rejected. Was not stoked about a summer reading list of any length, much less one so long it required a cart to shop for.
But Mrs. Shurtleff had read my ironic short story about a woman getting repeatedly hit by a bus (a thinly veiled piece of Backstreet Boys fan fiction, by the way). She thought I had the chops to succeed and needed to be challenged. Also, she mentioned that those classes got to go on dope field trips like Washington D.C., Disney World, and New York. Making a collage folder and writing some essays didn’t seem like too much work when bad ass spring breaks were waiting on the other side.
Once in the class, I learned it was more than just English. We learned art, literature, culture, history, architecture, music, and all the things you need to be a well-rounded human (and not sound like a total yeehaw at a dinner party). It was transformative. We were treated like small adults, given deadlines and projects with leeway on completing them. As for the trips, they were not school funded. Our teacher, Mrs. Muhl, empowered each of us to self-fund our trip with plenty of fundraising opportunities throughout the year. Money - or lack thereof - didn’t stop us from going if we wanted. She would encourage us to be enterprising and to earn the money ourselves rather than relying on parents.
We also got permanent hall passes, which was one of the best benefits of the whole program. If you got to school early in the morning, the teachers on hall monitor duty would usher you into the cafeteria where you could eat or do your homework in near silence. Not if you were a GT student. Several of us had magical pink hall passes with no date on them. These let us move past the hall monitor and make a hard left down a hallway to Mrs. Muhl’s room rather than be herded into the cafeteria.
All this to say, being a “gifted” kid included with it a collection of amenities that went beyond an ordinary learning experience. Abbott Elementary explores this concept, the disparity in experiential learning, and all the benefits of being labeled “gifted” heaped on only those kids. The gifted kids in the show get a hands-on learning experience. A class full of – Ms. Teagues struggles to find the word - “…regular? non-gifted? re-gifted?” - students walk by and see all the fun their counterparts are having. They beg their teacher to give them the same experience.
Being on the other side of the fence, we noticed the disparity, too. We knew we were getting VIP treatment, but without the benefit of maturity and experience, we felt entitled to it. Now, with hindsight and distance, it’s clear how harmful that disparity was and is.
Yes, in the “real world” there are actual VIP sections - closer concert tickets, better airplane seats, faster entrance to nightclubs. But that’s all for grownups. Grownups know why they get those things - they paid more for better seats, accumulated airline loyalty miles, or know the doorman. When you’re a kid, it’s not easy to identify why some kids get the velvet ropes and trips to Disney World while you’ve got to stand outside and wait to be let in.
On the flip side, all those perks come with strings attached. Senior year, they handed out some packets to us. They just had numbers on them, no names. We were told to fill them out as best we could. They were to be anonymously evaluated by a team at the higher levels of administration. The goal? To filter out future leaders of our fine city for the “Leadership Program.” There were five of us selected from my school. The commitment wasn’t much. We drove over on something like the last Friday of each month and learned how not to act like trash.
Seriously. They trained us on how to wear suits and how to choose our “power color.” They trained us on fine dining, teaching us which forks went where and which glasses were for wine or water. My group spectacularly failed at fine dining day. One of us said, “There better be steak,” not knowing the program’s director was standing behind him. We all got a talking to for laughing at what was arguably a great joke. Turns out that’s considered “rude,” but it was hilarious. It was also prescient. There was no steak. That’s what was really rude.
I know there were other lessons - probably how not to pick your nose or scratch your balls in public - but clearly they didn’t stick. Don’t get me wrong. Again, the perk was nice. Even without steak, we still got a free training meal and a few hours out of class.
The double edge sword of this was the pressure of expectation. We were The Chosen Ones, like the little green alien in Toy Story. The claw got us, and we believed we were ascending to a better place. Weeeee.
Except… chosen for what?
For every echelon, there was always some place higher to go. Even being in this group wasn’t enough. Amongst the GT students, there was still a race to the top 10% of our class. Then that wasn’t enough. You had to be one of the top 10 people of our class. After that, it became a race to where we’re going next, what we were going to be. College applications and acceptances. Big plans and pipe dreams. Achieve, achieve, achieve. “What’s next?”
It wasn’t enough for me to get a bachelors in creative writing. My senior year of high school, I declared to no one in particular that I would be getting a Ph.D. in the subject. I said this not knowing that was the tits-on-the-bull of degrees for what I ultimately wanted to be – a writer. I said it because it was terminal. The highest achievement. The most I could do. Plans have, of course, changed, but there are days I get pangs. Stupid, I know, but it was drilled into my brain matter. Achieve more. Do more. Be better. Live up to your potential.
Rather than a Ph.D. In English, I got a different kind of doctorate (I guess??) For what? To help people, sure. To demystify the law for folks when and how I can, yes. But also because it was what came next, what I was supposed to do after undergrad. I’m a comedian and podcast host. My job is not J.D.-required, much less even J.D.-preferred. It helps some days when we’re breaking down constitutional law, but it’s not much help when we’re proving the existence of dragons (THEY WERE REAL! I WILL FIGHT YOU!)
Even with the success of the show, I can’t help but feel some days like it’s still not enough. There’s an itch to do more. To achieve that next thing. I was talking with my writer friend, Victoria, the other day, about the idea of societally imposed timelines. It’s an odd, melancholy feeling of looking at your peers - in whatever arena, be it professional, personal, or educational - and feeling out of step.
I took five years to graduate from undergrad and four for law school. The normal route is four and three years, respectively. I also took a year off after college to work at Navy Pier selling tickets and giving tours on boat rides. As I started law school, I noted via social media that a high school classmate of mine was just finishing their law degree. Same gifted cohort. Same graduating class. Same hometown. So far “ahead” of me as I was just starting. I was rattled.
Of course, I forged ahead and finished anyway, however “late” and on whoever’s timeline. I achieved what I did in my law practice and now joke with my former colleagues that I am “retired” from practicing. The other day I researched a magical creature for several hours while drinking coffee in my PJs with no bra on. Truly living the dream.
Christie and I say to each other every day how absolutely grateful we are to do the job we do. Saying that again and again is the only way for me to combat that weird voice in my head that still whispers, You are not enough. Get an MFA, it tells me. Get an LLM in entertainment law. Achieve more. Put more on up on the wall.
The trick is to drown it out with gratitude. To remind myself that I am, as we all are, exactly where we’re meant to be for the journey each of us are on. The only person I need to be better than is me yesterday, and even if I’m not, that’s fine, too.
As for my “regular” classmates from all those years ago? That label is bullshit. They’re all gifted in their own ways. They’re artists and musicians and engineers and teachers and comedians. They’re dancers and coaches and moms and dads and counselors and realtors and human beings.
I am creeping up on twenty years out of the hallowed halls of John Horn High School (in 2025 - I have some time!) I realize it is time to cast off the pressure that has accumulated over the decades. As transformative they were, it is pathetic to have held onto these labels for so long.
But also, it was pathetic to hold on to them back then, too. It was pathetic for any of us to ever think we were “better” than one another when, in reality, we were always just different. Some of us were experts at what a test could pick up. Some of us were experts at something you couldn’t even test for.
In an ideal world, all students would get to relish in those creative, satisfying, exciting ways to learn. They would all get those perks, the trips, the hands-on training. And if you didn’t get them when you were in school, don’t worry. The perks weren’t even that good anyway. I told you, we never even got any steak.
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QUESTIONS FROM YOU
Normally this is where I answer a legal/pop culture question from you. I am getting married this week, though, so my brain power has been focused on helping get Sinisterhood stuff ready for me go on break for our honeymoon! I’ll hit y’all back with some more legal answers soon.
Instead, please enjoy these memes about gifted kid labels.
Got a legal question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.
Until next week, that’s the tea, and the next time I write to y’all, I’ll be married! 🥰
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