“Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson is once again addressing why she will not be releasing a school shooting episode.
In Brunson’s cover story for Glamour for her Women of the Year spread, she explained why she rejected the idea of highlighting school violence despite it being a threat to students and school staff in today’s society. She acknowledged that while most teachers are concerned about the possibility of a shooting taking place, many are simply trying to make it through their workday with the many personalities they have to oversee.
“I just think about the day-to-day in a workplace comedy, and I don’t think that that’s the realistic day-to-day in the classroom. I say that, knowing that school shootings happen all the time, every day or every week, unfortunately. But there are two different realities. There’s the one present in the classroom where teachers are just trying to get through a lesson. And then there’s the outside perspective of us engaging with teachers through the news,” Brunson told Glamour.
The ABC comedy has become an enormous hit, especially among educators who feel the show is an accurate depiction of what they go through on the job. For this reason, Brunson says she wishes to be as close to the facts as possible, and when she speaks to her friends in the profession, their concerns are typically not centered around workplace violence.
“They’re just trying to get through this lesson. They’re just trying to get the reading scores up. They’re just trying to do this job. If anything, the school shooting thing is in the background, like, ‘F**k.’ It’s kind of like, “‘We got to deal with that too?'” she added.
With so much violence being shown in the media, it’s refreshing to see “Abbott Elementary” give its fans a humorous escape.
